FWU Journal of Social Sciences, Spring 2021, Vol.15, No.1, 120-131 DOI: http://doi.org/10.51709/19951272/spring2021/15-10 The Development of a Family Cohesion Scale: A Preliminary Validation Sayyeda Taskeen Zahra and Sadia Saleem University of Management and Technology, Lahore Family is said to be an important agent for the socio-emotional development and growth of an individual. The existing research finds out the manifestation and expression of family cohesion among adolescents in the Pakistani cultural context. In phase I, a phenomenological approach was used to elicit the key characteristics of family cohesion from 30 adolescents followed by phase II, the establishment of content validity index, and phase III of pilot testing on 20 participants to check comprehension of the scale. In the last phase, 785 adolescents (Girls = 49%; Boys = 51%) were selected to determine the psychometric properties of the Family Cohesion Scale (FCS). Factor analysis yielded four factors of family cohesion namely mutual support, sharing, parental involvement, and emotional bonding. Furthermore, results also depicted high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, split-half reliability, and construct validity. The factors of family cohesion are discussed by considering the collectivistic cultural context of Pakistan . Keywords: family cohesion, reliability, validity, gender, parental involvement, adolescents. Family is known as the most fundamental institute that greatly influences the emotional and psychosocial well-being of children (Mason et al., 2012). Family greatly influences the psycho-social and emotional growth and development of children (Saleem et al., 2015). Family has been studied as a risk and protective factor in mental health problems of children (Saleem et al., 2017; Yeung & Chan, 2016). Children living in a supportive and cohesive family environment likely to have emotional, social, academic, and psychological competence (Jhang, 2017; Lang, 2018; Lin & Yi, 2017). On the other hand, children who perceive their family environment as controlling and rejecting tend to have less emotional, social, and academic competence and more mental health problems (Cruz-Ramos et al., 2017). Throughout the history of psychology, the role of the family has been studied from different perspectives like attachment (Bowlby, 1973), parenting (Rohner, 2004), and parenting styles (Baumrind, 1966), that ultimately increased our understanding about the long-lasting influence of Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ms. Sayyeda Taskeen Zahra, PhD Scholar, School of Professional Psychology, University of Management and Technology, Lahore Email: sayyedataskeen@gmail.com Contribution of Authors: 1. Sayyeda Taskeen Zahra: Data collection, data analysis, drafting the manuscript 2. Sadia Saleem: Conceptualization, data analysis, revising the manuscript critically