Modification and initial testing of the Family Communication Questionnaire (FCQ) for Japanese child-rearing families in the period one month postpartum

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a modified version of the Family Communication Questionnaire (FCQ) for women in the period one month postpartum with a focus on communication with the woman’s partner, own mother, and friends. The FCQ can measure the frequency of communication between women and their partners, own mothers, and friends across four childcare-related domains by methods such as face-to-face interaction, telephone, e-mail, and social networking services. In the present study, a total of 500 mothers were recruited from a facility in the Kansai region of Japan from February to July 2017 to complete a survey including a modified version of the FCQ and the General Functioning Subscale of the Family Assessment Device (FAD-GF). Two weeks later, 49 of 100 mothers asked completed a test-retest. After excluding responses that were incomplete for > 10% of the items in each domain, 399 (79.8%) valid responses were included in the analysis. The distribution of scores showed a floor effect for all scores except for those with the husband. The intraclass correlation coefficients for couple (woman-her partner), woman-her own mother, and woman-her friends were 0.719-0.897, 0.871-0.987, and -0.088-0.452, respectively, and Cronbach’s α coefficients were 0.886, 0.897, and 0.897, respectively. The FCQ and FAD-GF total scores were negatively correlated. The modified FCQ developed in the present study shows good internal consistency, stability, and validity for communication between mothers, their husbands, and their own mothers during the period one month postpartum.