ca Manual for FAMILY PATHOLOGY SCALE EPS-vvDA Ms. Vimala Veeraraghavan MA, (Pex), MS.M, PHO. Professor, Department of Applied Psychology University of Delhi, South Campus Benito Juarez Road NEW DELH! Archana Dogra HA, PhO. Director Dethi Schoo! of Business Shivalik NEW DELHI MANASVI Distributor NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CORPORATION 4/230, Kacheri Ghat, AGRA-282 004@ : (0562) 2464926INTRODUCTION The family is a primary social unit of every culture. In India, the family rather than the individual has been considered as the unit of social system. The Indian family reflects the socio-cultural fabric of Indian society, its philosophy and values (Sethi, 1989), The relationships within a family are complex, of varying degrees of intensity and myriad in nature. The emotional tone, which governs the relationship between any two persons, is continuously influenced in its course by emotional relationships of all others in the family. This changing manifold emotional currents and cross-currents determines the prevailing “atmosphere” in the family which sets the basis for interaction and interpersonal relationships in the family. The family is of central importance to human beings.and it is inconceivable to think of an individual's development without a family. The bidlogical, sociological and socio- cultural functions of the family occur in terms of the interactions of the family members with each other and with persons outside of the family. These interactions are the basic foundation over which the edifices of the family are built up. Over the centuries the many social changes that have occurred in societies have in one way or the other affected these interactions, yét despite these changes the family has retained its unity and identity more or less in the same ways in the past with very little change. This is all the more so in India. As is well known, in Indian setting the joint family sytem to an extent, has given way to nuclear family system and in a few cases, to single parent families, as is obtained in the western world, yet one cannot deny the fact that the child and the parents are part of a family. The strong emotional bond which exists amongst the members of a family, the typical roles and functions of each member, the values, the cultural influence, the religious affinity, and the social mores play a significant role in the development of the personality of an individual born in that family. In India, even today, the influence of the family on an individual's life is very high in that there is still relatively lesser scope for individual decision-making vis a vis family decision-making. The interactions continue to be relatively more one sided viz., parent to the child, the husband to the wife and the grarid parent to the parent. This could be seen in many families, where one ‘inds practically an inflexible interaction of a one sided nature.eeeen families, while children become independent of he parents by the an Schoo} in india, the dependence ofan individual on his family continues 1@ core relationship in the western families hinges between the husband and wife, in India it rests between the parent and the child, Sethi (1989) describes Indian families as having lasting roots in the past generation extending on to future generations, almost making one full cycle. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCLAE The family pathology scale, indicates the extent to which matadaptive behaviour is present amongst the family members in their interaction with each other i.e. between spouses and between parents and children. A total of 100 items were prepared in the form of statements which had to be rated on a 3-point scale, with 1 indicating low /no family pathology (‘Never' response), 2 indicating ‘average family pathology’ ‘occasional response) ana 3 indicating ‘high family pathology’ (most often response). This scale consisting of 100 items was distributed to 25 clinical psychologists & 25 psychiatrists. “The judges were asked to indicate as 70 what extent each item was indieative of family pathology on a three-point scale i.e. “highly indicative”, somewhatindicative” and “not atall indicative”. Using the internal consistency method, only those items were chosen on which the rating was the same amongst ail the 50 experts. Secondly, the items, which were given a rating of 1 indicating poor family pathology, differed by two points from the item that was chosen as indicative of high family pathology. Only those tems were selected and included in the fina! scale for family pathology, which met the above two oriteria. Thus, there are 42 Items in the scale to be responded by the subjects with ‘most ofter’, ‘occasionally’ & ‘never’, These were then administered toa group of 300 married couples from the normal population, (N = 600) and 100 couples from the psychiatric (pathological) population (N = 200) and the reliability and validity were worked out. Administration ‘This is a sell-administered scale. The respondents are given the instruction to complete all the statements by marking a tick @ on any of the three responses ‘most often’ @, ‘occasionally’ &% or ‘never’ whichever Is applicable in their case. They were asked not to omit any item from the scale. It was emphasised that there wae nothing tight'or wrong’ about these items and they should answer allitems frankly and truthfully without inhibition. Sinoe many tems were highly personal to the individuals,Manual for FPS-voa| 5 asked to independently rate each scale. Scoring Items indicative of ‘high family pathology’ viere given 3 by ticking most often, ‘moderate family pathology’ given 2 points by ticking on occasionally and ‘no family pathology’ was assigned a score of 1 by ticking i never response. Total score possible to obtain ranged between 42-126, with higher sco ® indicating higher family pathology, and lower score indicating the reverse Interpretation All the 42 items selected were indicative of amily pathology. These were to be tick-marked by the respondents as to what extent the behaviour occurred ‘most often’, ‘occasionally’ & ‘never’. Where the response oct urred ‘most often’, it was indicative of high family pathology, while ‘occasionally’ anc ‘never’ were indicative of average and no family pathology at all respectively. These scores were classified into three categories based on the scores obtained by the r ormal population (N= 600) and the Pathological population (N = 200). The categories are as follows Low/ No pathology -rdoese | Moderate pathology | 64-98 High pathology | 99-128 On a continuum running from 42 to 128, the 3 categories will fall at the points indicated a { 42 64 98 128 A Low... Moderate A_High —_a,High family Pathology is indicated in the 9 bine, 128 area and moderate family pathology et) 9 between 64-98. The scores below 64 are indicative of low or without pathology. ‘The means and standard deviations for the normal and pathology population are given in Table 1. TABLE 1 Groups | Mean Standard deviation | N Normal population [ass | 7.60 600 Psychiatric population 96.8 8.70 200 RELIABILITY () The split-half reliability correlation odd-even items applying Spearman Brown formula for doubling the test length was found to be x, = .57, N= 600 within an index of reliability of x,= 7 (i) The test-retest reliability ‘or this scale was x, = 0.79. The test-retest reliability was estimated to be x,= 0.63, with an index of reliability 79. These are prese 1ted in Table 2 below. TABLE 2 Split-half 6nd test-retest reliability values Index of reliability Split-haltf 600 70 Test-retest 600 79Manual for FPS-woal 7 VALIDITY (i) The face validity of the questionnaire appeared to be fairly high, as the items were prepared following intensive interviews of 300 couples regarding the extent of family pathology present in the family. (i) The content validity was adequately assured as only those items were selected forthe initial scale for which there was complete agreement amongst the experts. REFERENCE Sethi, B. B. (1989). Family as a potent therapeutic force. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 31, 22-30. 7,