Comparing males' and females' perspectives through family self-report

The development of reliable and valid means of assessing family functioning has been the subject of much research and theory-centered debate in the past several years. Self-report family rating scales have the advantage of being able to be administered to large samples and being subjected to scaling, statistical analyses, and factoring procedures (Bloom 1985; Olson et al. 1983). Still, there may be influences on one's perception of his/her family functioning that are unique and often not accounted for in analyses of such self-report scales. One fundamental, yet minimally researched, factor is whether male and female respondents differ systematically in the weights attributed to different elements of family functioning.