Psychometric Assessment and Refinement of the Family Issues Scale of the Human Dimensions of Operations (HDO) Project
Abstract
The present report summarizes psychometric analyses and recommendations for item refinement of the Family Issues scale a measure included a predeployment survey of operational stress among Canadian Forces personnel. Inspection of the items comprising the Family Issues scale revealed two distinct sections. The first section included 14 items that assessed respondents' family concerns in anticipation of their upcoming deployment with a Liken scale (i.e., 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree). The second section assessed respondents' knowledge of the availability of family oriented support services. As the two sections of the Family Issues Scale assess distinct dimensions, and because these sections used different scaling techniques, each section was treated as a separate scale: Family Attitudes and Perceived Support. Exploratory factor analyses of the items comprising the Family Attitudes scale yielded two separate factors: Family Concerns and Positive Attitudes. Subsequent reliability analyses of these two factors indicated that the Family Concerns factor had a robust alpha value of .81. Reliability analyses of the items within the Positive Attitudes factor were disappointing, however, resulting in a very low Cronbach's alpha of .49. The items within the Positive Attitudes factor do not appear to tap a single underlying dimension, and the inclusion of these items in further studies is not warranted. A monomethod-multimeasure analysis was also conducted to determine the relative validity of the Family Concerns and the Family Attitudes scale. Two versions of the Family Attitudes scale were used in this analysis: (1) a version that included the entire 14 items, and (2) a revised 11-item version, constructed to preserve as many of the original Family Attitudes scale. This analysis revealed patterns of correlations that substantiated most hypotheses.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA392655
Entities
People
- Luigi Pasto
- Megan M. Thompson
Organizations
- Defence Research and Development Canada