Structure and validadity of family harmony scale: an instrument for measuring harmony

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Culture plays a role in mental health, partly by defining the characteristics that are indicative of positive adjustment. In Chinese cultures positive family relationships are considered central to a person’s quality of life. The culturally emphasized characteristic of family harmony may be an important factor associated with psychopathology. This paper presents the development and psychometric examination of the Family Harmony Scale (FHS), an indigenously developed 24-item instrument tapping family harmony in Hong Kong residents. METHODS: In a final sample of 7,797 participants, the model fit of a higher-order model with one second-order factor and five first-order factors was tested. The factorial invariance across sex and age groups was also tested. A five-item short form (FHS-5) was also developed, with one item from each first-order factors and factorial invariance of this was also tested.

RESULTS: The higher-order model fit the data from large scale well and showed factorial invariance across sex and age groups. The short scale showed, as expected, a single-factor structure with good fit. Both scales also demonstrated high internal consistency, acceptable test-retest validity and good convergent and discriminant validity. The 24-item FHS was negatively associated with depressive symptoms after accounting for individual risk factors and general family function. Family harmony moderated the relationship between life stress and depressive symptoms such that those individuals who reported low family harmony had stronger associations between life stress and depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS: This study adds to the literature a systematically developed, multi-dimensional measure of family harmony, which may be an important psychological protective factor, in a large urban Chinese sample. The FHS-5 minimizes operational and respondent burdens, making it an attractive tool for large-scale epidemiological studies with Chinese populations in urban settings, which accounts for over half of China’s 1.4 billion people.