Child: care, health and development, 1987, 13, 111-125 Measuring the adequacy of resources in households with young children CARL J. DUNSTand HOPE E. LEET* Family, Infant and Preschool Programme, Western Carolina Centre, 300 Enola Road, Morganton, North Carolina 28655, USA Accepted for publication 31 October 1986 Summary Both the reliability and validity of the Family Resource Scale (FRS) are described. The FRS is a 30-item rating scale for measuring the adequacy of resources in households with young children. The ordinality of the items, rank ordered from the most to least basic, was established in a study of 28 professionals. Both the reliability and validity of the scale was established in a second study of 45 mothers of preschool-aged children. The utility of the FRS for assessment and intervention purposes is discussed. The purpose of this paper is to describe the procedures used to estabiish the reliability and validity of the Family Resource Scale (FRS). The FRS is an objective measure for assessing the adequacy of both resources and needs in households with young children. The scale is designed to assess the types of resources which have been identified as major components of both intrapersonal and interpersonal support (Bronfenbrenner 1979, House & Kahn 1985, Wills 1985). The scale includes 30 items that measure the adequacy of both physical and human resources, including food, shelter, financial resources, transportation, time to be with family and friends, health care, etc. (see Appendix). The individual FRS items are roughly ordered in a hierarchy from the most to the least basic. Each item is rated on a five-point scale ranging from not at all adequate to almost always adequate. The development of the scale was guided by several lines of research, including human ecology (Bronfenbrenner 1979, Garbarino 1982), the social support literature (Cohen & Syme 1985), family systems theory (Hartman & Laird 1983), and the help-seeking *Hope Leet is now affiliated with Seven Counties Services Ine,, Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Section, Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 111