The Family Resilience Inventory: A Culturally Grounded Measure of Current and Family‐of‐Origin Protective Processes in Native American Families

The purpose of this article is to introduce the Family Resilience Inventory (FRI) and present findings on initial efforts to validate this measure. The FRI is designed to assess family resilience in one's current family and in one's family of origin, enabling the assessment of family protective factors across these generations. The development of the FRI was the result of many years of ethnographic research with Southeastern Native American tribes; yet, we believe that this scale is applicable to families of various backgrounds. Items for the FRI were derived directly from thematic analysis of qualitative data with 436 participants, resulting in two 20‐item scales. Due to missing data, eight cases were removed from the 127 participants across two tribes, resulting in an analytic sample size of 119. Conceptually, the FRI is comprised of two factors or scales measuring distinct dimensions of family resilience (i.e., resilience in one's current family and resilience in one's family of origin). The results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported the hypothesized two‐factor structure (X2(644) = 814.14, p = .03, X2/df = 1.10, RMSEA = .03, CFI = .97, TLI = .96). Both the subscales and the total FRI scale (α = .92) demonstrated excellent reliability. The results also provided preliminary evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. This measure fills a gap in the absence of community‐based, culturally grounded, and empirical measures of family resilience. The examination of family resilience, which may occur across generations, is an exciting new contribution of the FRI. Resumen El propósito de este artículo es presentar el “Inventario de Resiliencia Familiar” (FRI, por sus siglas en inglés) y los resultados actuales sobre los primeros esfuerzos para validar esta medición. El FRI está diseñado para evaluar la resiliencia familiar en la familia actual de una persona y en la familia de origen de una persona, lo cual permite la evaluación de los factores protectores familiares entre estas generaciones. El desarrollo del FRI fue el resultado de muchos años de investigación etnográfica con tribus amerindias del sudeste; sin embargo, creemos que esta escala puede aplicarse a familias de diferentes orígenes. Los puntos que componen el FRI se obtuvieron directamente de análisis temáticos de datos cualitativos con 436 participantes, cuyo resultado fueron dos escalas de 20 puntos. Debidos a datos faltantes, se extrajeron ocho casos de los 127 participantes entre