Social workers have always been interested in the congruence between people's needs, capacities, and aspirations and the resources, demands, and opportunities of their environments. This concept has been referred to as person-environment fit. This article describes a study that developed and tested an instrument to measure this concept within a sample of hospital patients. Using a combination of ethnomethodological and survey methods, a multidimensional instrument was designed. Thirteen separate scales emerged, each tapping a separate dimension of fit. Twelve of these scales approached acceptable reliability for research purposes and most displayed beginning evidence of construct validity.
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Claudia J. Coulton (1979) studied this question.