Psychometric development of the Iceland-Expressive Family Functioning Questionnaire (ICE-EFFQ)

Instruments that are able to capture changes related to an intervention are of great value to the scientific as well as to the clinical community. The Iceland-Expressive Family Functioning Questionnaire (ICE-EFFQ) measures expressive emotions, collaboration, problem solving, communication, and behavior in families experiencing a chronic or an acute illness. The conceptual framework of the Calgary Family Assessment Model (Wright & Leahey, 2009) was used to construct the original questionnaire of 45 items and 10 subcategories. A total of 557 family members with a recent illness experience of a close relative answered the ICE-EFFQ in three different studies. Principal component factor analysis reduced the original questionnaire to 22 items with five factors emerging and a total Cronbach's alpha coefficient of α = 0.912 accounting for 60.3% of the total variability. Confirmatory factor analysis from two studies produced the final version of the questionnaire consisting of 17 items and four factors.