The data collected through the APGAR test aimed to measure family functions and changes in a postmodern context. Over three years, this study has been conducted to 77 individuals, 71 of whom were adults while the remaining 6 were underage people. These participants belong to 37 families from different social strata in the city of Quito-Ecuador, which were selected through convenience and non-probabilistic sampling. The APGAR design used a modification of the work [1], extrapolated to the Ecuadorian context.
The data has been collected, cleaned, and unified in a single file in a CSV structured format and without missing values. The participants’ personal information has been concealed to guarantee their identity remains anonymous. Additionally, those who participated in the project have given their consent for the use of their information for academic purposes, which include: scientific journals, presentations, and digital academic repositories.
The structured data, within the file, has a distribution in the form of rows and columns. Each row (instance) represents an APGAR test executed on an individual, while the columns represent the different variables (attributes) of the dataset. Each APGAR test has metadata collected during the process. The metadata corresponding to the informative data of the individuals are located in attributes 1 to 7 of the dataset and their description is as follows.
• Person_ID: Identifier of each individual who participated in the APGAR test. Discrete quantitative variable.
• Year: Data collection year. Discrete quantitative variable.
• Family_ID: Unique identifier of each family. Discrete quantitative variable.
• Age: Participant age in years. Discrete quantitative variable.
• Familiar_Rol: Self-identification of the role played by the individual in the family. Nominal qualitative variable with open categories. Seven different classes were identified: father, mother, son, daughter, nephew, grandmother, and stepfather.
• Gender: Self-identification of the individual's gender. Nominal qualitative variable with open categories. Two classes were identified: male and female.
• Location: Geographical location of the family home. Nominal qualitative variable with closed categories determined by the official zones that make up the metropolitan district of Quito. Nineteen classes were identified in total.
In the Ecuadorian context, a person is of legal age if he has reached an age equal to or greater than 18 years. Therefore, in order to discern these two segments of subpopulations within the family, the design of two different question types for the APGAR tests was required.
The Questions (Qi) for adults were:
• Q1: I am satisfied with the help I receive from my family when I have a problem or need.
• Q2: I am satisfied with the participation that my family gives me and allows me.
• Q3: I am satisfied with how my family accepts and supports my desire to undertake new activities.
• Q4: I am satisfied with how my family expresses affection and responds to my emotions, such as anger, sadness, love, etc.
• Q5: I am satisfied with how we share in my family: a) time to be together, b) spaces in the house, c) money.
The Questions (Qi) for underage people were:
• Q1: When I am worried about anything, I can ask my family for help.
• Q2: I like how my family talks and shares their problems with me.
• Q3: I like how my family allows me to do the new things I want to do.
• Q4: I like what my family does when I am happy, sad, angry, etc.
• Q5: I like how my family and I spend time together.
On the other hand, for each question, 5 possible answers were designed with different weights based on a linear symmetric likert scale, and with the same ratings for adults and underage people. The Likert scale weighted Answers (Ai), offered for the participants were:
• A1: Never (0 Points)
• A2: Almost Never (1 Point)
• A3: Sometimes (2 Points)
• A4: Almost Always (3 Points)
• A5: Always (4 Points)
Variables 8 to 32 correspond to the execution of the APGAR test, per se, and were coded in the form of a tuple, Question-Answer (Qi-Aj). The ‘i’ value identifies the 5 types of questions, while the ‘j’ index determines the 5 types of answers. All the tuples Qi-Aj were encoded through a boolean variable (0/1). Where ‘0’ indicates the absence of a value in the tuple and ‘1’ the presence of a value in the tuple.
All the APGAR tests were taken in Spanish since it is the official language of Ecuador, and then transcribed into English. Although the data has been collected by using the APGAR test to measure family functions and their changes in the postmodern context, it is important to note that the collected data could be used for other different purposes.