Internal construct validity of a Brazilian version of the McMaster Family Assessment Device

Abstract

ABSTRACT Objective To assess the internal validity of a Brazilian version of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD). Methods The questionnaire was applied to a sample of 80 adults of both sexes. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted after previous analysis of communalities and global suitability of the method to determine questions that did not share a significant percentage of variance with the defined factors. Varimax rotation method with Kaiser’s normalization was used to minimize the number of questions that had high factor loads. Results The Brazilian version maintained 28 questions distributed in four new dimensions containing 11, 5, 7, and 5 questions, respectively. To obtain those four factors or dimensions, we selected those with eigenvalue greater than two, which explained about 50% of the data variability. Conclusion The Brazilian version under examination showed different behaviors from those in the original instrument. A review of the instrument questions and dimensions is clearly needed. Further research with larger samples is required to examine the rating scale and its suitability to the Brazilian context.