Compare methods

	Family Quality of Life Scale	Capability Approach to Disability
Field	Disability Studies	Disability Studies
Family	Latent structure	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	2006
Originator	Lesa Hoffman, Janet Marquis, Denise Poston, Jean Ann Summers & Ann Turnbull (Beach Center on Disability)	Sophie Mitra (building on Amartya Sen)
Type	Family-level quality-of-life measurement scale	Conceptual framework operationalized for disability measurement
Seminal source	Hoffman, L., Marquis, J., Poston, D., Summers, J. A., & Turnbull, A. (2006). Assessing Family Outcomes: Psychometric Evaluation of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68(4), 1069-1083.	Mitra, S. (2006). The Capability Approach and Disability. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 16(4), 236-247.
Aliases	Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale, FQOL Scale, Family Quality of Life Survey, Beach Center FQOL	Capability Approach and Disability, Capability Model of Disability, Sen Capability Approach for Disability, Capability Deprivation Analysis of Disability
Related	3	3
Summary	The Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale (FQOL) measures quality of life at the level of the family unit rather than the individual, designed especially for families that include a member with a disability. Developed at the University of Kansas Beach Center on Disability by Lesa Hoffman, Janet Marquis, Denise Poston, Jean Ann Summers and Ann Turnbull, and psychometrically evaluated in 2006, the scale asks family members to rate their satisfaction across five domains: family interaction, parenting, emotional well-being, physical and material well-being, and disability-related support. Its central move is treating the family, not the person, as the unit whose quality of life is assessed, reflecting a disability-studies and family-systems view that support and outcomes are collective.	The capability approach to disability, articulated by Sophie Mitra in 2006 by adapting Amartya Sen's capability framework, defines disability as a deprivation of capabilities or functionings that arises from the interaction between a person's characteristics (including impairment), their resources, and the personal, social, and environmental conversion factors that turn resources into real opportunities. Rather than locating disability in the body (the medical model) or solely in society (the strong social model), it locates disability in the gap between what a person is actually able to do and be and what they could do and be. This reframing gives disability studies a measurement-friendly account that distinguishes potential from actual disability.