The Military Social Health Index: A partial multicultural validation

Routine military deployments place great stress on military families. Before South African soldiers can be deployed, they undergo a comprehensive health assessment, which includes a social work assessment. The assessment focuses on the resilience of the family system to estimate how well the family will cope when exposed to the stress of deployments. This article reports on the development and validation of a new measuring tool, the Military Social Health Index, or MSHI. The MSHI is made up of four scales, each comprising 14 items, viz social support, problem solving, stressor appraisal, and generalized resistance resources. An initial, large-scale, multicultural validation of the MSHI revealed strong levels of reliability (Cronbach α and standard error of measurement) and validity (factorial, construct, convergent, and discriminant).