Family Sense of Coherence and Family Adaptation
Applies sense of coherence (SOC) to family life to assess how adaptable families are to stressors. Family sense of coherence is how family unit ‘sees the world.’ Adaptation is how members ‘fit’ with each other and ‘fit’ with the community. Both spouses provide responses based on premise that all family members’ perspectives must contribute to any assessment of the unit as a whole. Two instruments combine to form score: 26-item family sense of coherence and 10-item family adaptation. Testing compared SOC with adaptation in families experiencing stressors with hypothesis that higher coherence is correlated with higher adaptation. 13-item short form is most commonly used and has been most commonly translated.
Antonovsky, A. & Sourani, T. (1988) Family sense of coherence and family adaptation. Journal of Marriage and the Family,50, 79–92.
Development of short form: Sagy, S. (1998) Effects of Personal, Family and Community Characteristics on Emotional Reactions in a Stress Situation. Youth & Society, 29, 311–329.
Translations:
Norwegian long form: Moen, Ø. L. and Hall-Lord, M. L. (2016). Reliability and Validity of the Norwegian Family sense of Coherence Scale. Open J. Nurs. 6, 1075–1086.
Short form translations:
Chinese: Ngai, F. W. & Ngu, S. F. (2011). Translation and Validation of a Chinese Version of the Family Sense of Coherence Scale in Chinese Childbearing Families. Nursing Research, 60(5), 295–301.
Japanese: Nakayama, Y., Hori, M., Kawahara, T., Sou, H., & Yamazaki, A. (2019). Translation and Validation of the Japanese Version of the Family Sense of Coherence Scale-Short Form in Nurses. Open Journal of Nursing, 9(8), 901–910.
Swedish--Adaptation for cancer: Mollerberg, M. R., Arestedt, K., Sandgren, A., Benzein, E., & Swahnberg, K. (2020). Adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the short version of Family Sense of Coherence Scale in a sample of persons with cancer in the palliative stage and their family members. Palliative & Supportive Care, 18(1), 24–32.
Turkish: Cecen, A. R. (2007). The Turkish Version of the Family Sense of Coherence Scale-Short Form (FSOC-S): Initial Development and Validation. Educational Sciences : Theory & Practice, 7(3), 1211.
Additional information
| Construct | Family coherence and adaptation |
|---|---|
| Condition | No specific condition |
| Age | Any |
| Country Where Developed | Israel |
| Number of Items | 36 |
| Subscales | adaptation, coherence |
| Short Form? | Yes |
| Short Form # items | 12 |
| Respondent | Both spouses |
| Language(s) | Chinese, English, Hebrew, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish |
| Cost/Fee | No cost |
| How to Access | Short-form available (English, Turkish, Hebrew) online after registration: https://www.stars-society.org/copy-of-soc-scales-1 |