McMaster Family Assessment Device

The Family Assessment Device asks each family member to describe how their family actually works — not how any one person is doing, but whether the household solves problems, talks openly, divides tasks fairly, and responds to each other's feelings.

Sixty statements are rated on a four-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree, written at about an eighth-grade reading level. Six scales cover the dimensions of the McMaster Model: problem solving, communication, roles, affective responsiveness, affective involvement, and behavior control. A seventh, General Functioning, gives an overall picture. Scale scores are averages rather than sums, so each runs 1 to 4, and higher scores mean poorer functioning. Everyone in the family aged 12 and up completes it separately.

• NCTSN Measure Summary with cut-off scores

Licensing Notes: The instrument, subscale key, and scoring syntax are posted freely by the University of Wisconsin's Affective Research Consortium and by the NIH Common Data Element repository.