Development and Validation of a Scale to Assess Caregiver Management Behaviors in Response to the Decreased Engagement of People with Dementia in Daily Activities.

Abstract

Objective: To explore types of caregivers management approaches, to develop a scale to assess caregivers management behaviors and their relationship implications and to examine the scale s psychometric qualities. Method: First, based on a qualitative study, developing the corpus of items to align as closely as possible to caregivers experience using their own words; second, exploring the structure of the scale and reducing the number of items; and third, studying the validity of the scale. Results: After assessing the validity requirements of the original corpus of items, an exploratory factor analysis of the first version of the scale with 62 items permitted the identification of three dimensions of caregiver management: Negative control , Positive stimulation and Overwhelming feeling . Because of its redundancy with respect to existing scales, the last dimension was removed. In the last step, a confirmatory factor analysis showed that a 13-item two-order factor model was in an acceptable model. Conclusion: The 13-item scale can be used to identify caregivers facing difficulty adapting their support as a baseline for following caregivers over time or evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention. Clinical implications: This scale can rapidly evaluate caregivers management behaviors and their relational consequences and monitor outcomes of support interventions.