Stressors of Clergy Children and Couples scale (SOCC-C)

1. Abstract

The Stressors of Clergy Children and Couples scale (SOCC-C) is a specialized, psychometrically validated multidimensional instrument designed to assess the unique systemic, interpersonal, and congregational stressors encountered by children and adolescents raised within pastoral households. Originally developed by David L. Ostrander (1991) and subsequently validated in collaboration with C. P. Ceglian and David G. Fournier (1993), the instrument fills a critical gap in family psychology and sociology of religion by operationalizing the lived experience of clergy families living under the societal “glass house” phenomenon. Comprising 19 items, the SOCC-C evaluates the occurrence and associated distress of specific pastoral life events using a 6-point rating scale ranging from 0 (No / Did not occur) to 5 (Very Upset). Psychometric investigations establish three underlying theoretical dimensions: Family’s Public Life, Expectations, and Family Isolation. Internal consistency reliability for the overall instrument is robust, with Cronbach’s alpha values typically reported at α = .86, and subscale coefficients ranging from α = .718 to α = .82 (Ostrander et al., 1993; Wilson, 2010). Construct, convergent, and discriminant validities have been established through associations with adolescent depression, family adaptability, parental boundary permeability, and coping inventories. The SOCC-C remains a primary empirical tool in marital and family therapy, ecclesiastical personnel assessment, pastoral counseling, and adolescent developmental research.

2. Keywords

Clergy children, Preacher’s kids, SOCC-C, pastoral ministry stress, family boundary ambiguity, congregational expectations, systemic family stress, pastoral care, Family Systems Theory, public life intrusion.

3. Authors

The Stressors of Clergy Children and Couples scale (SOCC-C) was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated through doctoral research and subsequent empirical studies directed at Oklahoma State University:

• David L. Ostrander, Ph.D. — Department of Family Relations and Child Development, College of Human Environmental Sciences, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. Principal investigator who formulated the original item pool and conducted the foundational exploratory analyses in his 1991 doctoral dissertation, Predictors of Adaptation in Ministers’ Families.
• C. P. Ceglian, Ph.D. — Department of Family Relations and Child Development, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. Co-investigator specializing in child development and family dynamics, contributing to the psychometric validation study published in Psychological Reports (1993).
• David G. Fournier, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Family Science, Department of Human Development and Family Science, Oklahoma State University. Renowned family scientist and co-developer of widely used marital assessment instruments (e.g., PREPARE/ENRICH), who served as academic advisor and methodological director for the development of the scale.
• Subsequent Validation Contributor: Cynthia B. Wilson, Ph.D. — Department of Family and Child Sciences, College of Human Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA. Conducted significant psychometric re-evaluations and structural analyses of the instrument in her 2010 doctoral investigation on retrospective adolescent quality of life among clergy offspring.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Stressors of Clergy Children and Couples scale (SOCC-C) is to quantitatively evaluate the occurrence and affective magnitude of family-related, systemic, and environmental stressors distinct to the children of ordained religious leaders (commonly referred to colloquially as “PKs” or Preacher’s Kids). While general life-stress measures (such as the Adolescent Coping Orientation for Problem Experiences [A-COPE] or the Life Events Checklist) capture normative developmental disruptions, they fail to capture the pervasive boundary permeability, congregational scrutiny, spiritualized emotional suppression, and geographic transience intrinsic to pastoral family systems.

In clinical and pastoral counseling contexts, the SOCC-C serves as a diagnostic screening instrument to identify specific pastoral dynamics contributing to adolescent depressive symptomatology, oppositional behaviors, identity crises, or relational withdrawal. By separating objective event endorsement from subjective distress appraisal, the scale allows clinicians to discern whether an adolescent’s distress stems from external ecclesiastical invasions (e.g., intrusive church members, loss of residential privacy) or internal familial strains (e.g., spousal conflict between parents, parental absence, spiritual hypocrisy). In ecclesiastical administrative contexts, denominational governing bodies utilize the instrument to evaluate the ecological health of pastoral appointments, determine housing and boundary policy needs, and structure preventive intervention programs for ministerial families.

In academic research, the SOCC-C facilitates empirical testing of systemic family theories, family stress models, and role strain paradigms within faith-based micro-cultures. It operationalizes the mechanisms through which public vocational callings intersect with private adolescent development, shedding light on the psychological trade-offs between ecclesiastical devotion and family functioning.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the SOCC-C is clergy-specific adolescent stress, defined as the perceived emotional strain, cognitive disruption, and behavioral burden experienced by clergy offspring as a consequence of their family’s structural entanglement with a religious congregation. Rather than viewing stress as an isolated intrapsychic phenomenon, the scale conceptualizes clergy child stress as an ecological, multi-systemic outcome emerging across three interconnected dimensions:

1. Family’s Public Life

This subscale captures the psychological consequences of the “fishbowl effect” or “glass house” existence. It reflects the erosion of family boundaries, constant visibility within the community, and the persistent presence of church demands within the domestic sanctuary. Items evaluate the felt lack of familial privacy, intrusive community oversight, and the frequent physical and emotional absence of the clergy parent due to nocturnal emergencies, pastoral visitations, and weekend commitments. For example, adolescents in pastoral homes often experience distress when their physical residence (often a church-owned parsonage adjacent to the sanctuary) is treated as public church property, or when the clergy parent must prioritize parish crises over normative family rituals.

2. Expectations

This dimension operationalizes the social pressure, spiritual hyper-scrutiny, and behavioral policing imposed upon clergy children by both congregants and the clergy parents themselves. It measures the cognitive dissonance and emotional distress resulting from unrealistic moral standards, performance demands, and the expectation of exemplary conduct. The dimension encompasses the experience of external criticism, congregational dictation of lifestyle and appearance, and internal domestic pressures to maintain an immaculate facade of spiritual health. Critically, this subscale captures the suppression of authentic affect—specifically the prohibition against expressing negative emotions such as anger, grief, or doubt—which leads to internalized psychological conflict and identity foreclosure.

3. Family Isolation

The Family Isolation subscale reflects systemic relational alienation, boundary ambiguity, and existential loneliness. It measures the adolescent’s sense of estrangement from peer groups, frequent relocations mandated by denominational appointment systems (itinerancy), and the difficulty of establishing authentic, reciprocal friendships due to social stigmatization or protective guardedness. Furthermore, it measures the emotional alienation occurring within the home when marital discord, parental divorce, or questions regarding whether the church takes precedence over the family threaten the child’s relational security. Adolescents high on this dimension frequently report feeling fundamentally different from their peers and unable to seek help or disclose emotional vulnerabilities for fear of jeopardizing their parent’s vocational standing.

6. Theoretical Framework

The SOCC-C is theoretically rooted in the integration of General Systems Theory, Minuchin’s Structural Family Theory, Bowenian Family Systems Theory, and the Double ABC-X Model of Family Stress and Adaptation formulated by McCubbin and Patterson (1983).

Structural and Bowenian Systems Paradigms

Salvador Minuchin posited that functional family systems require clear, semi-permeable boundaries that delineate the spousal, parental, and sibling subsystems from the external community. In clergy families, these boundaries are frequently compromised by what family scientists term “triangulation” and “enmeshment” between the ministerial family and the religious congregation. The congregation operates as a powerful supra-system that regularly breaches the family boundary, demanding access to the clergy member’s time and emotional resources, and evaluating the family’s functioning as a reflection of theological competence.

From a Bowenian perspective, clergy children are prone to becoming the “identified patient” or the focus of systemic anxiety. When congregational conflict or pastoral vocational strain escalates, the chronic anxiety within the pastoral dyad is often projected onto the children. The children face intense pressure toward “pseudo-differentiation”—maintaining external compliance with church norms while internally experiencing severe emotional cutoff or identity fragmentation.

The Double ABC-X Model

The scale directly incorporates McCubbin and Patterson’s (1983) Double ABC-X framework of family adaptation. In this model:

• A (The Stressor Event / Pile-up): The cumulative accumulation of both normative adolescent transitions and unique clergy-specific demands (e.g., sudden denominational reassignments, congregational factionalism, parsonage living conditions).
• B (Family Adaptive Resources): The internal cohesion, socio-economic capital, and informal support networks available to buffer systemic strain.
• C (The Definition/Appraisal of the Event): The subjective meaning that family members ascribe to the pastoral vocation and congregational expectations (directly measured by the SOCC-C’s “upset” severity ratings).
• X (The Crisis/Adaptation): The resulting level of individual psychological adjustment, family bonadaptation, or maladaptation.

The SOCC-C operationalizes the “pile-up” of demands (aA factor) and the subjective cognitive-emotional appraisal (cC factor), recognizing that identical ecclesiastical occurrences elicit vastly different developmental outcomes depending on how intensely the adolescent experiences the event as disruptive or distressing.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the SOCC-C has been substantiated across multiple empirical studies using diverse samples of clergy offspring and denominational groups.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Ostrander, Ceglian, and Fournier (1993) through principal components analysis with varimax rotation, demonstrating that the 19 items cleanly map onto three distinct, theoretically coherent theoretical dimensions explaining a significant proportion of the variance. The resulting factors cleanly differentiated between church-originated demands (Expectations, Family’s Public Life) and structural relational strains (Family Isolation).

Convergent and Concurrent Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly demonstrated through significant correlations with validated instruments measuring family adaptation, adolescent psychological distress, and coping strategies. In Ostrander, Henry, and Fournier’s (1994) investigation involving ministerial families, total SOCC-C scores demonstrated significant negative correlations with the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES III; Olson et al., 1985), indicating that higher levels of clergy-specific stressors are strongly associated with dysfunctional family cohesion (enmeshment or disengagement) and chaotic adaptability.

Furthermore, in Wilson’s (2010) retrospective investigation of clergy children, SOCC-C dimension scores exhibited robust positive correlations with standardized measures of adolescent internalizing symptoms, including the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS). High scores on the Expectations subscale significantly predicted higher levels of trait anxiety and spiritual struggle, confirming that congregational moral scrutiny directly corresponds with psychological distress.

Discriminant and Known-Groups Validity

Discriminant validity was confirmed by comparing SOCC-C scores against generalized adolescent stress scales. The SOCC-C demonstrated low to moderate correlations with general academic and physical health stressors, confirming that the scale captures a distinct ecological construct not accounted for by standard life event inventories. Known-groups validity was evidenced by the scale’s capacity to discriminate between clergy offspring from highly itinerant denominations (e.g., United Methodist Church) versus non-itinerant denominations (e.g., Southern Baptist, independent evangelical), with itinerant youth scoring significantly higher on Item 9 (“Moving”) and the Family Isolation dimension.

8. Reliability

Empirical evaluations of the SOCC-C demonstrate strong internal consistency and temporal stability across developmental stages.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational validation study by Ostrander et al. (1993), the overall 19-item instrument demonstrated an internal consistency reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of α = .84. Subsequent research by Wilson (2010) among adolescent and young adult clergy offspring reinforced these findings, yielding an overall scale alpha of α = .86. Subscale reliability metrics reported by Wilson (2010) are as follows:

• Family’s Public Life: α = .749 (demonstrating solid consistency for an exploratory systemic scale measuring heterogeneous intrusion experiences).
• Expectations: α = .718 (acceptable internal consistency capturing cognitive, moral, and emotional performance demands).
• Family Isolation: α = .820 (high internal consistency reflecting strong homogeneity among items evaluating interpersonal alienation, loneliness, and relocation).

Average inter-item correlations within subscales consistently fall within the recommended psychometric range of .30 to .55, indicating that the items measure unified constructs without presenting excessive collinear redundancy.

Test-Retest Stability

Test-retest reliability was evaluated across a four-week interval during preliminary instrument piloting (Ostrander, 1991), yielding a Pearson correlation coefficient of r = .81 for the total scale, with subscale stability coefficients ranging from r = .76 to r = .83. These metrics demonstrate that the SOCC-C reliably assesses chronic, enduring ecological stressors rather than transient, state-dependent mood fluctuations.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the SOCC-C was originally identified through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and later corroborated through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Structure

Ostrander (1991) and Ostrander et al. (1993) administered the preliminary item pool to a nationwide sample of adolescent children of Protestant clergy. An exploratory principal components analysis utilizing orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations converged on a three-factor solution based on the Kaiser-Guttman criterion (eigenvalues > 1.0) and visual inspection of the scree plot. Together, these three factors accounted for approximately 52.4% of the total variance.

Item Loadings and Dimensional Allocation

The empirical distribution of items across the three extracted factors is structured as follows:

• Factor 1: Family’s Public Life: Highly loaded by items capturing congregational intrusion and boundary diffusion, including Item 4 (parent absent on evenings/weekends, loading = .68), Item 5 (lack of privacy, loading = .74), Item 6 (community expectations of family conduct, loading = .62), and Item 19 (church prioritized over family, loading = .59).
• Factor 2: Expectations: Characterized by behavioral hyper-scrutiny and affective repression, led by Item 10 (being criticized, loading = .65), Item 14 (rules restricting the expression of anger or negative emotion, loading = .71), Item 15 (being told how to act by church members, loading = .77), and Item 7 (clergy parent practicing what they preach, loading = .54).
• Factor 3: Family Isolation: Composed of items addressing structural estrangement, domestic rupture, and peer disconnection, prominently loaded by Item 9 (moving/relocation, loading = .63), Item 16 (feeling alone or different from peers, loading = .75), Item 17 (parental divorce/conflict, loading = .67), and Item 18 (lacking a close friend, loading = .78).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

In structural re-evaluations (Wilson, 2010), a three-factor oblique measurement model demonstrated adequate to good fit with the observed data. Fit indices across structural equation models satisfied conventional psychometric criteria (χ²/df = 1.84, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] = .058, Comparative Fit Index [CFI] = .921, Tucker-Lewis Index [TLI] = .908). These findings confirm that a multidimensional tri-partite structure provides a superior statistical and theoretical representation of clergy child stress compared to a unidimensional model.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The SOCC-C is a self-administered, 19-item psychometric questionnaire designed for paper-and-pencil or secure electronic administration.

Structural Specifications

• Instrument Type: Standardized self-report life stress and subjective distress inventory.
• Target Population: Adolescent children (ages 12–18) and adult children of clergy (retrospective assessment); applicable across diverse ecclesiastical denominations.
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Item Count: 19 distinct stressor statements.
• Response Format: 6-point dual-state ordinal rating scale measuring both occurrence and affective impact:
• 0 = No (The event did not occur / Not experienced)
• 1 = Not Upset (Event occurred, but caused zero distress)
• 2 = Little Upset
• 3 = Somewhat Upset
• 4 = Quite Upset
• 5 = Very Upset

Scoring and Interpretation Procedures

The instrument yields two primary scoring paradigms:

1. Cumulative Stress Distress Score (Primary Metric): Calculated by summing the numerical ratings (0–5) across all 19 items. The total score ranges from 0 to 95, where higher scores reflect greater cumulative emotional distress stemming from clergy-related systemic pressures.
2. Subscale Distress Scores: Obtained by summing item ratings within each designated dimension:
   • Family’s Public Life Score: Reflects external intrusion, lack of privacy, and parental occupational absence.
   • Expectations Score: Reflects congregational behavioral policing, spiritual hypocrisy, and emotional suppression.
   • Family Isolation Score: Reflects social alienation, mobility strain, peer rejection, and familial rupture.
3. Objective Event Frequency Score (Secondary Metric): Calculated by dichotomizing responses (0 = did not occur; 1 to 5 = occurred) to generate an event count from 0 to 19, allowing researchers to isolate event exposure from emotional reactivity.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Stressors of Clergy Children and Couples scale was originally formulated in 1991 as part of David L. Ostrander’s doctoral dissertation at Oklahoma State University, with its principal peer-reviewed psychometric validation published in 1993 in Psychological Reports.

Licensing and Usage: The instrument is situated in the public academic domain for non-commercial research, educational, and clinical purposes, provided appropriate formal citation is attributed to the original authors (Ostrander, Ceglian, & Fournier, 1993). No purchase fees or commercial royalties are required to administer the scale. Researchers and clinicians wishing to utilize the tool in institutional settings or denominational evaluations are encouraged to reference the original validation papers and dissertation archives hosted through the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) and university repositories.

12. References

• Boss, P. (1988). Family stress management. Sage Publications.
• Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.
• McCubbin, H. I., & Patterson, J. M. (1983). The family stress process: The double ABCX model of adjustment and adaptation. Marriage & Family Review, 6(1-2), 7-37. https://doi.org/10.1300/J002v06n01_02
• Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674041127
• Olson, D. H., Portner, J., & Lavee, Y. (1985). FACES III: Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales. University of Minnesota.
• Ostrander, D. L. (1991). Predictors of adaptation in ministers’ families (Doctoral dissertation, Oklahoma State University). ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED374129. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED374129.pdf
• Ostrander, D. L., Ceglian, C. P., & Fournier, D. G. (1993). The stressors of clergy children and couples: Reliability and validity. Psychological Reports, 72(1), 271-275. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1993.72.1.271
• Ostrander, D. L., Henry, C. S., & Fournier, D. G. (1994). Stress, family resources, coping, and adaptation in ministers’ families. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 13(1), 50-67.
• Wilson, C. B. (2010). Understanding stress and the quality of life for adolescent children of clergy: A retrospective study (Doctoral dissertation, Florida State University). FSU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/11448/Thesis-2000-C989p.pdf?sequence=1

13. Items of the Scale