A battery for the assessment of young Spanish adults: Individuation on the family of origin

In Spanish families, parent-child relationships play a crucial role, but they also present specific risks for the children's transition to adulthood which may hinder their individuation and foster the creation of dysfunctional family patterns in their family of origin. In Spain there is a lack of instruments to assess parent-child relationships in these terms. The present study examines the psychometric properties of a battery to assess individuation with mother, individuation with father, and the existence of dysfunctional family patterns (DFP) in 535 young Spanish adults (20-31 years). Items from the Munich Individuation Test of Adolescence (Walper, 1998), the Network of Relationships Inventory (Furman & Buhrmester, 1985), the Filial Responsibility Scale (Jurkovic & Thirkield, 1999), and the Feeling Caught Between Parents and Parental Pressure scales (Walper & Schwarz, 2001) have been used. The initial structure obtained through exploratory factor analysis underwent a confirmatory factor analysis. The results hint at a model adjusted to the data which guarantees the construct validity of the proposed structure. Internal consistencies for scales and subscales were acceptable to excellent, with α ranging from .62 to .91. Different indices of concurrent validity were also analyzed. The results generally support the reliability and validity of the new instrument. Limitations are discussed.