The Chinese version of the Caregiver Difficulties Scale: Psychometric evaluation.

Abstract

Evaluating caregiver burden and its health impact is an essential component of long-term care plan for children with disabilities; the Caregiver Difficulties Scale (CDS) has high conceptual sensitivity. The aim of this study was to adapt the CDS to Chinese and investigates the psychometric properties of this tool. The study was carried out among caregivers of children with cerebral palsy (n = 194). The CDS, Caregivers Burden Inventory (CBI) and World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) were used for data collection. Twenty experts were consulted to evaluate the content validity of the scale. The confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to measure the construct validity of CDS. The Spearman correlation coefficients were calculated among CDS, CBI and WHOQOL-BREF to examine the convergent validity and discriminant validity. The reliability was evaluated by examining internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The result of expert consultation showed that the S-CVI was 0.894 and the I-CVI ranged from 0.70 to 1.00. The fit indices showed that the original correlated four-factor model of CDS was adequate: χ2 = 268.397; df =243; χ2 /df =1.105; RMSEA = 0.023; CFI = 0.985; NNFI = 0.869; TLI = 0.982; IFI = 0.986. The score of CDS was positively strong associated with the scores of CBI (r= +0.764); negatively correlating with the scores of WHOQOL-BREF (r = -0.627). The Cronbach's alpha was 0.840; intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) value was 0.843. The Chinese version of the CDS is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate burden for caregivers of children with CP in China.