Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

How do Runaway Adolescents and their Parents Perceive the Family? Measurement Invariance in the Family Functioning Scale

School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Sanna J Thompson
School of Social Work
The University of Texas at Austin
1925 San Jacinto, Austin, Texas 78712, USA
Tel: 512-232-0604
E-mail: SannaThompson@utexas.edu

Received Date: October 23, 2013; Accepted Date: November 18, 2013; Published Date: November 24, 2013

Citation: Thompson SJ (2013) How do Runaway Adolescents and their Parents Perceive the Family? Measurement Invariance in the Family Functioning Scale. J Child Adolesc Behav 1:117. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000117

Copyright: © 2013 Thompson SJ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract
Exploring perceptual discrepancies and how they affect family life may be particularly relevant when household
dynamics have broken down to the point that a child runs away or is forced to leave the home. This study explored
the sources of differences between parents’ and youths’ reports of family functioning and, more generally, illustrates
how to perform confirmatory factor analysis methods to purge error due to measurement invariance. Basic concepts
and methods that are often needed in social work research are described. Creating uni-dimensional and configurable
invariant subscales resulted in improved significance for the Conflict subscale over traditional methods. All other
subscales remained significantly different between parents and youths at all levels of invariance. Findings highlight
the caution required in using any scale to measure the same construct for two different populations, such as parents
and children.

Keywords