Development of a caregiver burden questionnaire for the patients with dementia in Iran

• Main Authors: Ibrahim Abdollahpour, Saharnaz Nedjat, Maryam Noroozian, Banafsheh Golestan, Reza Majdzadeh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2010-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Preventive Medicine
• Subjects: Content validity; Questionnaire development; Caregiver burden; Dementia
• Online Access: http://www.ijpvmjournal.net/article.asp?issn=2008-7802;year=2010;volume=1;issue=4;spage=233;epage=241;aulast=Abdollahpour
• ISSN: 2008-7802; 2008-8213

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to design a valid questionnaire suitable to the Iranian culture to measure the stress mounted on dementia caregivers. Methods: In order to design a valid and reliable tool, the stages of content validation were performed as follows: 1- Development: search of relevant electronic databanks and use of experts and caregivers′ opinions to prepare appropriate content, review and correction of the content through consecutive focus group discus-sions with experts. 2- Judgment Quantification: determination of inter-rater agreement (IRA), relevancy and clarity of each of the items and the tool as a whole. Reliability was measured with Cronbach′s alpha, and repeatability was measured with intra-cluster correlation through repeated test-piloting at 2-3 week in-tervals. Results: Using a conservative approach, the IRA for the overall relevancy and clarity of the tool was 87.87% and 81.81%, respec-tively. Through overall agreement (the items that were recognized as appropriate by 100% of the specialists were divided by the total number of items) the overall relevancy of the tool obtained was 98.62%. The overall clarity of the tool was calculated through the mean clarity of the questions and was 99.3%, and eventually its comprehensiveness was 100%. The overall Cronbach′s alpha was 94% and the intra-cluster correlation that was obtained through comparing the overall score of the questionnaire in the pre-test and test phase was 97%. Conclusions: The new tool has good reliability and validity suit-able to Iranian dementia patients and their caregivers′ culture. Researchers can use this tool to monitor the pressure mounted on dementia caregivers and to assess interventions in this group.