Family Connectedness Scale

Many past studies have shown that being connected and bonded to one’s own family offers protection and resilience against negative mental health outcomes. Past studies have illustrated that the parent–child relationship reduces risky behaviors involving the use of alcohol, marijuana, tobacco use, suicidal behaviors, and early sexual initiation. Despite this importance, we did not find a measure of family connectedness. Moreover, given the cultural differences in family functioning in the Indian cultural context, there is a need for a measure of family connectedness in the Indian cultural context. The present study aimed to develop and validate an indigenous measure of family connectedness among youth in India. Initially, the judges evaluated an item pool of 35 items on a 4-point scale (4 = Always, 3 = Often, 2 = Rarely, and 1 = Never) for appropriateness of the content. In this process, we removed 18 items and the second draft of the item pool had 17 items. We recruited 433 adolescents (age range = 14–17 years) from various schools in a metro city in South India. After the initial item analysis and pilot study, we tested the factor structure of the eight-item family connectedness scale using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). A two-factor solution was derived from the PCA, with 61% of the variance explained by the eight items: sharing and support (“I can share my problems with my family”) and acceptance in the family (“My family respects my privacy”). Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using an independent sample showed that a two-factor structure of family connectedness fit the data well. Furthermore, measurement invariance analysis across gender demonstrated that the scale had configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance across gender and full configural, metric, scalar, and uniqueness invariance across the type of the family. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the subscales and the total scale ranged from 0.76 to 0.85. The final family connectedness scale consists of eight items.