Conceptualizing and measuring family quality of life

J Intellect Disabil Res. 2005 Oct;49(Pt 10):777-83. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00751.x.

Abstract

Background: Increasing emphasis on family-centred approaches to services and supports for families of children with disabilities has surfaced the issue of accountability for family outcomes. We present a review of literature about the impacts of children with disabilities on families as a backdrop to proposing family quality of life as a concept that encompasses impacts of disability and one that can be used to assess the impact of supports and services on families.

Method: We briefly introduce the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale, providing information about its factor structure, reliability and convergent validity.

Results: The Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale contains 25 items assessing family ratings of importance and satisfaction with five domains: Family interaction, Parenting, Emotional well-being, Physical/material well-being and Disability-related supports.

Conclusion: We present a framework for utilizing a measure of family quality of life as a long-term outcome in concert with other short-term measures of service outcomes for families.

Publication types

  • Validation Study

MeSH terms

  • Family / psychology*
  • Humans
  • Intellectual Disability / psychology
  • Quality of Life / psychology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Surveys and Questionnaires