Effect of family strength over the psychological well-being and internal locus of control

Abstract

If the development of the concept of “self” as a unit distinct from the environment ontogenetically follows the development of the concept of “us”, then psychosocial constructs would play a very important role in explaining psychological constructs. The current study explores to what extent the psychosocial construct “family strength” can be used to predict the psychological constructs “psychological well-being” and “internal locus of control”. Three different scales were administered to a non-probability sample of 400 subjects (153 males and 247 females) to measure family strength, psychological well-being and internal locus of control. Structural Equation Models found that 67% of the variance in psychological well-being and 59% of the variance in internal locus of control were predicted by “family commitment-trust” with good data adjustment (÷2/df = 1.78, GFI = .95, AGFI = .94, and NFI = .92). These findings show the primacy of the psychosocial dimension over the psychological dimension. The article discusses the implications of these findings for professional healthcare practice.