The Family Assessment Device: An Update

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• Author: Gabor I. Keitner,Abigail K. Mansfield,Jennifer Dealy
• Date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12080

The Family Assessment Device: An Update

ABIGAIL K. MANSFIELD*

GABOR I. KEITNER*

JENNIFER DEALY

†

The current study set out to describe family functioning scores of a contemporary commu-

nity sample, using the Family Assessment Device (FAD), and to compare this to a currently

help-seeking sample. The community sample consisted of 151 families who completed the

FAD. The help-seeking sample consisted of 46 families who completed the FAD at their first

family therapy appointment as part of their standard care at an outpatient family therapy

clinic at an urban hospital. Findings suggest that FAD means from the contemporary

community sample indicate satisfaction with family functioning, while FAD scores from

the help-seeking sample indicate dissatisfaction with family functioning. In addition, the

General Functioning scale of the FAD continues to correlate highly with all other FAD

scales, except Behavior Control. The cut-off scores for the FAD indicating satisfaction or

dissatisfaction by family members with their family functioning continue to be relevant

and the FAD continues to be a useful tool to assess family functioning in both clinical and

research contexts.

Keywords: Assessment; Family Functioning; Measures

Fam Proc 54:82–93, 2015

The Family Assessment Device (FAD) (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983; Kabacoff,

Miller, Bishop, Epstein, & Keitner, 1990; Miller, Epstein, Bishop, & Keitner, 1985)

was developed 30 years ago as a self-report measure of perceived family functioning. It

was designed to assess the six dimensions of the McMaster Model of family functioning

(Epstein, Bishop, & Levin, 1978) as well as a family’s overall or general functioning. Since

the development of the FAD, a variety of measures to assess family functioning have been

developed, but the FAD continues to be one of the most widely used measur es of family

functioning. It has been translated into 27 languages, and has been in use for 30 years. It

is easy to administer, and yields information about a family’s satisfaction with its func-

tioning in six domains. It also provides cut-off scores that allow clinicians to categorize

family members as either satisfied with functioning in a domain or dissatisfied (Miller

et al., 1985).

The FAD has been used extensively in research. It has been used to discriminate

between mentally ill and nonclinical samples, between physically ill and well samples

(Friedmann et al., 1997; McFarlane, Bellissimo, & Norman, 1995; Miller, Kabacoff,

Keitner, & Epstein, 1986), to evaluate family functioning in the context of a variety of

physical and mental illnesses (Keitner et al., 1987; Leonard, Jang, Savik, & Plumbo,

*Department of Psychiatry, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI.

†

Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Abigail K. Mansfield, Department of

Psychiatry, Rhode Island Hospital, 593 Eddy Street, Providence, RI 02903. E-mail: amansfieldmarcaccio@

lifespan.org

Funding for this study was provided by the Firan Foundation.

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Family Process, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2015 ©2014 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12080