Quantitative family evaluation measures

Abstract

The quantitative instruments which adequately measure total family functioning, or even some of the more meaningful variables in family relationships and functioning, have not yet been developed. We can only hope that a major breakthrough will occur in this area in the next few years, following the success of conceptualizing family system psychodynamics, psychopathology and treatment. In the meantime we have some tools, such as rating scales, adjective check lists, codings of joint discussions and joint projective test responses, etc., by means of which certain discrete aspects of family functioning, phenotypic rather than genotypic, can be measured.