Brief family relationship scale: A Turkish adaptation and validity and reliability study

The aim of this study was to adapt the Brief Family Relationship Scale (BFRS) developed by Fok et al. (2014), which is itself an adaptation of the Relationship dimension of the Family Environment Scale (FES) developed by Moos and Moos (1994), to Turkish. The psychometric properties of the scale were tested in three stages. The study group consisted of 808 students for confirmatory factor analysis to test the construct validity of the scale, 205 students for the criterion validity analysis, and 168 high school students for the test-retest reliability analysis. To test the criterion validity of the scale, the participants were consecutively administered the BFRS, the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS), the Internet Addiction Test-Adolescence (IAT-A), and the Satisfaction with Family Life Scale. In order to test the construct validity of the scale, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted by comparing one-factor and two-factor models. Correlation analyses comparing similar scales were conducted to test the criterion validity of the scale. The reliability of the scale was tested using the Cronbach alpha, split-half, and test-retest methods. In addition, independent groups t-test analysis was used to test whether the BFRS scores differed according to the demographic variable of gender. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis and model comparison analyses conducted to test the construct validity suggested that the original three-factor structure of the BFRS was the most appropriate model with adequate fit values. In addition, it was found that there was a significant negative correlation between the BFRS scores and IAT-A scores, and a significant positive correlation between the BFRS scores and SWEMWBS scores and Satisfaction with Family Life Scale scores. It was concluded that there was a significant negative correlation between the cohesion dimension of the BFRS and the IAT-A scale, and a significant positive correlation between the cohesion dimension of the BFRS and the SWEMWBS and Satisfaction with Family Life Scale. There was also a significant negative correlation between the expressiveness dimension of the BFRS and the IAT-A scale, and a significant positive correlation between the expressiveness dimension of the BFRS and the SWEMWBS and Satisfaction with Family Life Scale. Additionally, there was also a significant negative correlation between the conflict dimension of the BFRS and the IAT-A scale, and a significant positive correlation between the conflict dimension of the BFRS and the SWEMWBS and Satisfaction with Family Life Scale. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.92. After confirming that the Cronbach alpha coefficient of the scale was adequate, the correlation between the two halves of the scale was calculated to test the reliability of the measurement tool. The correlation value obtained was found to be 0.86, over 0.70, which suggests that the Turkish adaptation of the BFRS is reliable. The test-retest reliability of the scale was 0.984, which signifies significant correlation between the overall scores obtained from repeated administration of the scale. Therefore, it was concluded that the scale can be reliably administered at different times. The scores obtained from the cohesion and conflict dimensions of the scale differed significantly according to gender, while the scores obtained from the expressiveness dimension did not. The total BFRS scores also differed significantly according to gender. The results showed that the adapted scale is a valid and reliable tool that can be used to assess adolescents' family relationships.