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The Association for Family Therapy 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley
Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Family Therapy (2000) 22: 128143
01634445
Overview
The Beavers Systems Model offers a cross-sectional perspective on
family functioning. Family competence is conceptualized as falling
along one dimension and family style is viewed as falling along a
second orthogonal dimension. Figure 1 is a diagram of this model.
The horizontal axis family competence relates to the structure, available information and adaptive flexibility of the system. In
systems terms, this may be called a negentropic continuum, since
the more negentropic (flexible and adaptive) a family, the more the
family can negotiate, function and deal effectively with stressful situations. High competence requires both structure and the ability to
change structures. There is a complex interaction of morphogenic
a Executive Director, Robert Beavers Family Studies Center, Southern
Methodist University, Dedman College, PO Box 750442, Dallas TX 75275-0442,
USA.
b Associate Professor of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
USA.
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sified as centripetal and all seven substance abuse and all four
borderline personality disorder cases were classified as centrifugal
(Beavers and Hampson, 1990) .
Self-report Family Inventory
The Self-report Family Inventory (Beavers and Hampson, 1990) is a
thirty-six-item, self-report instrument which may be completed by
family members of 11 years of age and older. The Self-report Family
Inventory measures five family domains: health/competence,
conflict, cohesion, leadership, and emotional expressiveness. The
health/competence subscale includes nineteen content items
involving family affect, parental coalitions, problem-solving abilities,
autonomy and individuality, optimistic versus pessimistic views, and
acceptance of family members. The conflict subscale includes
twelve content items involving overt versus covert conflict, including arguing, blaming, fighting openly, acceptance of personal
responsibility, unresolved conflict, and negative feeling tone. The
cohesion subscale includes five content items dealing with family
togetherness, satisfaction received from inside the family versus
outside, and spending time together. The leadership subscale
includes three content items involving parental leadership, directiveness, and degree of rigidity of control. Finally, the emotional
expressiveness subscale includes six content items dealing with
verbal and nonverbal expression of warmth, caring and closeness
(Hampson and Beavers, 1988). Respondents answer all Self-report
Family Inventory items except the last two on a Likert-type scale,
with 1 being Yes: Fits our family well; 3 being Some: Fits our family
some; and 5 being No: Does not fit our family.
The Self-report Family Inventory has high internal consistency
reliability with Cronbach alphas between .84 and .93 and testretest
reliabilities of .85 or better. The Self-report Family Inventory also
has good validity with canonical correlations of .62 or better
between the Self-report Family Inventory Competence scores and
the observer-rated Beavers Interactional Competence Scale
(Hampson et al., 1989).
The clinical validity of the Self-report Family Inventory has
been shown by its capacity to discriminate groups of psychiatric
patients with differing diagnoses (Hampson and Beavers, 1990:
61). For example, in this study of forty-six diagnostically heterogeneous cases, all ten cases with schizophrenia were classified as
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being within the severely dysfunctional centripetal family grouping and all four cases of borderline personality disorder fell into
the borderline centrifugal family grouping as predicted by the
Beavers Model.
The Self-report Family Inventory also corresponds well with
other self-report family scales measuring conceptually similar
domains. For instance, the Self-report Family Inventory
health/competence subscale correlates with the general functioning subscale of the Family Assessment Device (r=.77: Miller et al.,
1985) and Self-report Family Inventory. The cohesion subscale of
the Self-report Family Inventory correlates with the cohesion scale
from FACES III, a self-report scale for the Circumplex Model of
Marital and Family Functioning (r= -.67: Beavers and Hampson,
1990; Olson, 1986).
Summary of research
Our research programme has shed light on the distribution of families in terms of the main dimensions of the Beavers Model; the relationship between the Self-report Family Inventory, the Beavers
Interactional Scales and instruments derived from other models of
family functioning; and the relationship between the dimensions of
the model and treatment process and outcome. A summary of the
results of this research follows.
Normative data
Since the 1970s we have accumulated Beavers Interactional Scales
data on over 1,800 families from both clinical and non-clinical
populations. From these data we have found that 5% of the families
studied fell into the optimal range; 38% fell into the adequate
range; 38% fell into the mid-range; 16% fell into the borderline
range; and 3% fell into the severely dysfunctional range on the
Beavers Interactional Competence Scale (Beavers and Hampson,
1993). We accept that our data are not drawn from a normative
stratified random sample, but believe that they provide an approximate indication of the distribution of families along the central
dimension of our model. These results have confirmed our expectation that adequate and mid-range levels of competence are relatively common, while optimal and dysfunctional levels of
functioning are relatively rare.
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the highest level of goal attainment in family therapy had the following profile. They were more competent, with a more centripetal
style, attended at least six sessions, and formed a good therapeutic
partnership with the therapist. It was noteworthy that the following
demographic variables were unrelated to therapy outcome: family
income, family size, family structure (single versus two-parent
households), family race and therapist gender.
In the second of our two studies on therapy outcome, we examined the degree to which the outcome of therapy was related to the
match between family type (as defined by the Beavers Interactional
Scales) and therapist style in a cohort of 175 families which
attended at least three therapy sessions (Hampson and Beavers,
1996a). These families were a subset of those who participated in
the first study for whom complete datasets were available. In each
case after the third session, therapists rated their therapeutic style
in working with the family on three dimensions. These dimensions
were openness in disclosing the therapeutic strategy to the family
(from very open to guarded); power differential in the relationship
with clients (from egalitarian to maximally hierarchical); and partnership in the therapeutic alliance (from close and co-operative to
distant and directive).
Families rated as more competent and families which were characterized by a centripetal style fared best when their therapists
were more open about their therapeutic strategy, more egalitarian
in the power differential they established with their clients, and
more joined in partnership with families within the therapeutic
alliance. Families rated as more dysfunctional and more centrifugal in their style made greater therapeutic progress when their
therapists were less open about their therapeutic strategy, and
established a more hierarchical therapeutic relationship characterized by interpersonal distance and directiveness. These results
confirm that different therapeutic styles are appropriate for differing types of families as defined by the Beavers Model of Family
Functioning.
Clinical implications
Family assessment and goal specification lays a solid foundation for
effective family therapy. If there are not goals which require assessment, preferably goals determined by negotiation with family
members, therapy can add to, rather than subtract from family
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