Retrospective measurement of representational aspects of childhood relationships: Construction of the relationship-context-scale

Abstract

A scale for retrospective measurement of representational aspects of family relationships in the first eight childhood years was tested in a sample (N = 333) from West (Osnabruck) and East Germany (Halle an der Saale). Internal consistency (alpha = .92) and mean corrected item-total-correlation (r(it) = .56) are satisfactory. The Relationship-Context-Scale consists of five subscales: I. ``Quality of marital relationship of the parents''; 2. ``Quality of maternal relationship''; 3. ``Quality of paternal relationship''; 4. ``Family relationships'' and 5. ``Family harmony''. Subjects from East Germany have higher scores on ``Family relationships'' and on ``Family Harmony''. Comparisons with sociodemographic subsamples and with an established instrument in family diagnostics (Gehring, 1993) show highly valid results. The significance of retrospective methods in developmental psychology is discussed.