Development and psychometric testing of a measure of informal caregiving for hospitalized older adults

Aim. This paper is a report of the development and psychometric testing of the questionnaire evaluating informal caregiving for hospitalized older adults. Background. Informal caregiving of hospitalized older adults is an understudied phenomenon that lacks a valid and reliable measure to capture its multi-dimensionality. Methods. An instrument development procedure, followed by an empirical study, was conducted from February to November 2009. Instrument development included item generation and content validity, which was established by five experts. The validation study utilized a retrospective between-patients design. The sample consisted of 279 patients, aged 70 and older, who were hospitalized in a large medical centre in northern Israel. The internal consistency reliability, construct, convergent and divergent validity of the measure were tested. Results. The 14-item scale describes various aspects of informal caregiving for older adults in the hospital setting. The scale has four dimensions: Instrumental care, Supervision of care, Psychological support and Ensuring and Explaining care. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the theoretical model of the four dimensions of care. Reliability analysis revealed acceptable-to-high estimates for the total and for the dimensional scores (ranging from 0·78 to 0·89). The convergent and divergent validity coefficients were all in the expected direction. Conclusions. The preliminary psychometric properties of the measure showed acceptable results. The measure should be further explored in different cultural settings and for its ability to link between caregiving attributes, as captured by the measure, and hospitalization outcomes in older adults.