The Experience in Personal Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS.pers): Development and Psychometric Properties

• Author: Leoni Link,Christina Hunger,Jochen Schweitzer,Julian Geigges,Jan Weinhold,Andreas Voss,Annette Bornhäuser
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12205

The Experience in Personal Social Systems

Questionnaire (EXIS.pers): Development and

Psychometric Properties

CHRISTINA HUNGER*

ANNETTE BORNH€

AUSER*

LEONI LINK*

JULIAN GEIGGES*

ANDREAS VOSS

†

JAN WEINHOLD*

JOCHEN SCHWEITZER*

This study presents the theoretical background, development, and psychometric proper-

ties of the German and English versions of the Experience in Personal Social Systems

Questionnaire (EXIS.pers). It assesses how the members of a personal social system experi-

ence their situation within that system. It is designed as a research tool for interventions in

which only one member of the system participates (e.g., Family Constellation Seminars).

The EXIS.pers was created to measure change on the individual level relating to one’s own

important personal social system. In Study 1, we used exploratory factor analysis (EFA)

for latent variable identification of the original German EXIS.pers (n=179). In Studies 2

and 3, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the dimensionality of the

German (n=634) and English (n=310) EXIS.pers. Internal consistencies and cross-cul-

tural structural equivalence were assessed. EFA indicated that a four-factor model pro-

vided best fit for the German EXIS.pers. For both the German and English EXIS.pers,

CFA provided the best fit for a five-factor bi-level model that included a ge neral factor

(Experience In Personal Social Systems) and four dimensions (Belonging,Autonomy,

Accord,Confidence). Good internal consistencies, external associations, and cross-cultural

structural equivalence were demonstrated. This study provides first evidence for the

*Institute of Medical Psychology, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidel-

berg, Germany.

†

Institute of Psychology, Quantitative Research Methods, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Heidelberg,

Germany.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christina Hunger, Institute for Medical

Psychology, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, Bergheimer Straße 20, D-

69115 Heidelberg, Germany. E-mail: christina.hunger@med.uni-heidelberg.de

All authors have agreed to authorship in the indicated order. There has been no prior publication, or the

nature of any prior publication, and no financial interest in the research. Ethical approval: The research

was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Heidelberg Medical Faculty (S-178/2011). Publication of this

article has been made possible by generous funding from the DFG (German Research Foundation) within

the framework of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 619 “Dynamics of Ritual,” University of Heidel-

berg. We thank Diana Drexler and Gunthard Weber for sharing what they expected to be the positive sys-

temic outcomes of their work and for continuously providing valuable advice during the development of

the EXIS. We thank Michael Kerman, the director of child psychotherapy at KIDS Company, for his very

generous support. Fletcher Dubois, Vanessa Gordon, Marcel Laqueur, Carol Bornh€

auser, Mary Beth

Robinson, and Hilary Niehues as our bilinguals translated the EXIS. We are very thankful for their cri-

tique during the translation process. Finally, with meticulous corrections and suggestions for revision,

Anja Sander critically revised our research methods and statistical analyses, and Mary Beth Robinson

contributed greatly to the clarity and readability of our paper.

154

Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 1, 2017 ©2016 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12205

German and English EXIS.pers as an economical and reliable measure of an individual’s

experience within his or her personal social systems.

Keywords: Experience in Personal Social Systems (EXIS.pers); Scale Development;

Confirmatory Factor Analysis; Structural Equivalence; Cross-Cultural Equivalence;

Systems Measure; Systemic Interventions; Systemic Therapy; Systemic Family

Constellations

Fam Proc 56:154–170, 2017

Given the predominating individualistic focus in counseling and psychotherapy

research (for an overview see Lambert, 2013), it is still rare to find measures that

enable the identification of the effects of interventions on the individual level, as they

relate to an important social system. The Experience in Social Systems Questionnaire

(EXIS) aims to measure a client’s experience of how well he or she functions within an

important social system. It allows each client to decide who the principal members of the

social system are, irrespective of whether the focus of that social system is personal

(EXIS.pers) or organizational (EXIS.org).

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “SOCIAL SYSTEMS” AND “SOCIAL SYSTEMS

MEASURES”?

Since family systems terminology is not quite identical between the United States and

Europe, we start by clarifying our central terms (see von Schlippe & Schweitzer, 2012).

We understand social systems as a collectivity of individuals who are bound together as a

unit by multiple interactions (Hall & Fagen, 1956) and differentiated from their environ-

ment by a boundary of meaning (Willke, 1993). Verbal and nonverbal communication con-

nects the members of a social system (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Jackson, 1967). Through

communication, every member contributes to a social system’s functioning. Membership

issues can a priori be defined in a normative way (e.g., both partners in a couple, all mem-

bers of a nuclear family such as the father, mother, and children). Alternatively, they may

also be defined as whomever an individual decides to call a member of this social system.

In personal social systems, this may be for example an attachment figure who supported

the child in its search for identity if the birth mother and/or father were not emotionally

involved in the mother–father–child relationship, or an intimate friend after a studen t has

left her parents’ home but is not yet in a romantic partnership, or a sibling subsystem that

was separated from the nuclear family by domestic violence. In organizational social sys-

tems, this may not include all team members of, say, a surgical ward but only the chief

physician, the intern, and the chief surgery nurse.

When we reviewed social systems measures, we found some flexible family systems

measures (Hamilton, Carr, Cahill, Cassells, & Hartnett, 2015; Pinsof et al., 2015), but

mostly we found measures of systems functioning (see Sprenkle & Piercy, 2005) like the

Family Assessment Device (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983; Mansfield, Keitner, &

Dealy, 2014; Staccini, Tomba, Grandi, & Keitner, 2014) and the Family Adaptability and

Cohesions Scale (Olsen, Protner, & Lavee, 1985). These measures assess the level of func-

tioning in dyadic relationships (“you-me”; e.g., Alonso-Arbiol, Balluerka, Shaver, & Gil-

lath, 2008) or whole families (“we-as-a-whole”; e.g., Green, Harris, Forte, & Robinson,

1991) and encourage judgments from a meta-perspective on the system, for example,

“How would you value what is happening in the system that you are part of in terms of

we?” Systemic measures that allow the clients to decide whom they consider to be the

Fam. Proc., Vol. 56, March, 2017

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