Overview: Students will select a specific family issue, locate a family instrument designed to measure this issue, report its psychometric properties, and discuss how well the instrument measures the family issue with appropriate citations to support.
Purpose: Please see Course Schedule for relationships between these assignments, course objectives, and competencies.
Format and Preparation:
• Carefully follow the directions that follow to successfully complete this assignment.
• Post is to be made to the Discussion titled ‘Family Assessment Instrument Post’.
• Assessments that are reprinted in our text book may NOT be used for this assignment; those
that are mentioned may be used.
• Students may want to consider locating a measure that they can also use for their Case Study
Presentation; if so, be sure to identify your case for that assignment so this task will save you time
later.
• When this assignment is complete, students may use this ‘Family Assessment Instrument Post’
Discussion as a resource for identifying appropriate assessment instruments that may be required for other assignments or in other courses. The instructor will also attempt to enter this material into the Glossary function on the course website for all to view easily. Students can access the current Glossary to see the work of previous students. To do so, click on Resources- Glossary.
• Read this: What is an assessment instrument? Social work develops and uses measures of social and psychological phenomena. These measures are designed to represent concepts or constructs. The constructs most relevant to social work are generally latent variables. In other words, most of the phenomena studied by social work researchers and treated by practitioners are not directly observable. Examples of phenomena not directly observable include self-esteem, depression, stress, closeness, commitment, effectiveness, and many others. These phenomena must be inferred from observations collected on some behavior that is assumed to operationally define the unobservable characteristic of interest. An operational definition is most useful when it delineates boundaries of behavior and distinct points between those boundaries. Typically, measures—scales, indices, and tests—of unique items are developed to measure a particular dimension of social or psychological phenomena. Special considerations must be taken into account for cross-cultural measures. Data are gathered and statistical models are employed to determine the extent to which the scale, or measurement instrument, has functioned as intended. Measures that function as intended are published for use by practitioners.
• Read this: Please be aware of culture. Notes from the textbook about cultural competence while selecting an instrument: Family help-seeking patterns and behaviors vary among racially and ethnically diverse families (Rasheed, Rasheed, & Marley, 2011). Mistrust and hesitation are often apparent at first, and they may appear guarded and reserved (see Chapter 4). Minority families may rely heavily on extended family ties and church organizations during difficult times. There is need to have more culturally informed family practice models and culturally congruent measures and techniques. The lack of culturally competent assessment centers on three main issues: (a) practitioners’ bias and/or lack of awareness of cultural differences, (b) reliance on stereotypes or overgeneralizations for assessment strategies, and (c) culturally biased measurement and assessment instruments (Jordan & Franklin, 2011, p. 365).
Assignment Outline:
1. Select, name, and briefly define a specific family issue (1- 2 sentences).
2. Locate, identify, and briefly describe (purpose, number of items, what kind of scale such as Likert) a
family instrument designed to measure this issue and cite it in text and in your reference list.
• Include a direct link to assessment if one is available (3 sentences). This may be a link to an
academic article that reprints it or a website. Either should be represented appropriately in your
APA style reference list and in an in-text citation.
• Locate the original cite for this measure. In other words, using the library database, locate the
journal article in which the measure was first introduced. For example, the Beck’s Depression
Inventory was first introduced in the article cited below:
Beck, A.T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J., & Erbaugh, J. (1961) An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4, 561-571.
3. Report the instrument’s psychometric properties by including one scholarly journal article that explains these properties and cite it in text and in your reference list. There are two broad types of psychometric properties that a measure must have in order to be considered ‘good’ at measuring a construct; they are reliability, and validity. (3 sentences). This information may be located in the article that is the cite for the original measure, IF it is not, you may have to locate and cite an additional academic article.
4. Report if this instrument is culturally competent/ sensitive/ appropriate by including one scholarly journal article that explains this (the same article used in the above item will likely also give you this information too, citing the same resource is fine). This information might discuss if the instrument is also valid and reliable for use with people who are not White males. (2-3 sentences).
5. Discuss how helpful you feel the instrument would be at measuring the family issue and say why (3 sentences).
6. Include a reference list in APA format which should include all sources cited in-text. Note: Depending on the assessment instrument you choose and the manner in which you locate the original cite and information about psychometric properties, you may have 1 to 3 items that will need to be cited in-text and in the reference list of this post.6
