Assessing families in their own homes

Assessment of the family in its own home provides important information about the family's style of regulating its internal environment. The author presents data from a study of families in which one of the spouses was alcoholic. These families were observed at home on nine occasions over a six-month period; the technique used, the Home Observation Assessment Method, measured dimensions of family behavior associated with routines of daily living. Dimensions of home behavior were highly correlated with traditional clinical measures of psychiatric symptomatology, severity of alcoholism, and family boundaries.