Date of Award

Spring 2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling and Human Services

Committee Director

Jude Austin

Committee Member

Anthony Perez

Committee Member

Emily Goodman-Scott

Committee Member

Andrew P. Daire

Abstract

The primary goal of this study is to add to the validation and psychometric development of the Family Adjustment Measure (FAM; Daire, Dominguez, Carlson, & Case Pease, 2014). The FAM is a treatment-planning tool to assist members of the helping profession assess four different areas in parental and family adjustment for parents of children with disabilities (i.e., parental distress, family-based support, social support, and positive coping skills). Previously, the FAM was normed on predominantly middle- to upper-class, Caucasian females. However, lower-income, ethnic minority families experience systemic prejudice and other contextual and social barriers in their experiences of raising a child with disabilities that may not accurately be reflected in the original FAM model. Therefore, this study will utilize an archival data set from a federally-funded research grant, Project TOGETHER (To Offer Great Education That Harvests Enduring Relationships), to conduct a multilevel factor analysis on the FAM with a more diverse sample of parents of children with disabilities. Results of this study provided a new 16-item Family Adjustment Measure for Diverse Families (FAM-DF) that better reflected the experience of individual parents of children with disabilities, while accounting for couple influence on factor scores.

ISBN

9780355884357

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