Validating the Concord Index as a measure of family relationships in China
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Journal of Family Psychology
Publication Date
12-1-2012
Volume
26
Issue
6
First Page
906
Last Page
915
Abstract
Interest in family functioning across cultures has become more widespread, but our instruments have not kept pace by measuring constructs that are especially relevant outside the West. We present the psychometric properties of the Concord Index (CI) in the family context. The CI examines (qihe), translated most closely into English as concord. The term includes concepts of harmony and mutuality, and is a characteristic of dyadic relationships valued in Chinese cultural groups that form about a fifth of the world's population. The scale was adapted to measure 2 types of family relationships: specific dyadic relationships within the family between any individual family member and another (the A-P perspective), as well as an individual's composite assessment of all his/her family relationships (the A-FAM perspective). The 10-item measure was internally consistent, stable over 2 weeks, and showed factor invariance across gender, age, relationship, and household size for A-P and A-FAM perspectives. The A-P correlated negatively with disagreement with the partner. The A-FAM correlated with measures of family functioning, well-being, leisure time spent with family members, and with measures of emotional but not physical symptoms. Furthermore, the A-FAM measure added predictive power to individual measures of emotional functioning in assessing subjective happiness. The CI adds to other "imported" instruments designed to measure family function in Chinese populations because of its brevity, its adaptability for measuring dyadic and global family relationships across family roles, its easily understood items, and its incremental validity in predicting well-being beyond individually focused measures.
DOI
10.1037/a0029994
Print ISSN
08933200
E-ISSN
19391293
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2012 APA
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Lee, P. H., Stewart, S. M., Lun, V. M. C., Bond, M. H., Yu, X., & Lam, T. H. (2012). Validating the concord index as a measure of family relationships in china. Journal of Family Psychology, 26(6), 906-915. doi: 10.1037/a0029994