Validating the Family Resilience Assessment Scale to Maltese families

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to cross-culturally validate the Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS) developed by Sixbey (2005). The second objective was to identify the major factors helping Maltese families to instil resilience. The process of validation involved translating the scale to Maltese and back-translating it to English. An expert panel reviewed the translated versions of the scale to ensure that content validity was not lost in the translation process, while ensuring that the scale had cultural validity for the Maltese context. A test retest analysis was performed in a pilot-study of 15 participants and further changes to the items were effected. The scale was then tested in a final random sample of 225 participants. The factor analysis identified six factors that contribute to family resilience in Malta. These six factors and their respective Cronbach‟s Alpha are: „Family Communication and Problem Solving‟ (α= 0.87), „Maintaining a Positive Outlook‟ (α= 0.79), „Outreach‟ (α= 0.70), „Ability to Make Meaning of Adversity‟ (α= 0.68), „Community and Friendship Outlook‟ (α= 0.68) and „Family Connectedness‟ (α= 0.22). The resulting Maltese version of FRAS was labelled FRAS-MV, which had an Alpha of α = 0.86 and was considered as a valid measure of family resilience for the Maltese context. Further investigation in a larger sample is required to establish the validity of FRAS-MV. The results indicated that more investment in communities is required, in particular to extend the Access Community Resource Centres to reach more communities and to create Family Resource Centres offering preventive and treatment programmes.