Evaluating the effects of a family education intervention.

Abstract

The role of the family is regarded as one of the key variables influencing rehabilitation outcomes. Rehabilitation literature ranks family education as one of the important elements of a rehabilitation program--but as the cost of health services escalates, it is becoming increasingly important to justify the expenditure of resources for family education. Little was found in the literature about how to demonstrate or evaluate the benefits gained from family education interventions, and no instrument that had been used for this purpose was identified. The Family Assessment Device (FAD) (Epstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1983) is a self-report instrument that was cited in the literature (Bishop & Miller, 1988) as a way to measure changes in family functioning that resulted from a clinical intervention. It seemed possible that the FAD also might be used to evaluate the effects of an educational intervention for families. A study was designed using the FAD to evaluate the outcome of a family education series provided by an outpatient rehabilitation program for head-injured patients; however, the expected improvements in family functioning, evidenced by changes in mean scores on the FAD, did not occur. While the results of this study were disappointing, it may be that the FAD could serve as the prototype in the development of an instrument designed specifically to measure the effects of a family education intervention during rehabilitation.