Family Intimacy Measures

“Intimacy is a term that, despite its widespread use, remains relatively ambiguous” (Hirschberger, Florian & Mikulincer, 2003, p.676). This sentence underlines the difficulty to define, and to measure family intimacy. Indeed, measuring family intimacy involves taking into account both several dimensions of the construct, and different level of analysis. In the literature, several definitions of intimacy have been provided (Erikson, 1963; Reis & Shaver, 1988; Sullivan, 1953), Often intimacy is defined using terms as cohesion, closeness, support, trust, self-disclosure, responsiveness, presence, interdependence, positivity (Foley & Duck, 2006).