Psychometric properties of the Chinese family assessment instrument in Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong

This paper reports evidence on the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the Chinese Family Assessment Instrument (C-FAI), an instrument developed to assess family functioning in Chinese populations. A convenience sample of 1,462 adolescents from junior secondary schools completed the C-FAI and measures of parent-adolescent conflict. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that five factors were abstracted from the scale, a finding which was similar to those reported in previous validation studies. Results also showed that the C-FAI was internally consistent and its scores were moderately correlated with measures of conflict with parents, providing support for the convergent validity of the measure. Finally, females perceived family functioning to be better than did males and age was linearly related to perceived family dysfunction. In conjunction with the previous findings, the present study suggests that the C-FAI can be used to objectively assess family functioning in Chinese adolescents.Department of Applied Social Science