Abstract
PurposeThe CarerQol instrument has been designed and validated as an instrument able to measure both the positive and the negative impacts of caregiving on the quality of life of informal caregivers (CarerQol-7D), as well as their general happiness (CarerQol-VAS). The aim of this study was to assess the construct validity of the CarerQol in the Hungarian context.MethodsThe CarerQol was translated into Hungarian. Subsequently, in a cross-sectional online survey, representative for the general Hungarian population (N = 1000), informal caregivers were identified (N = 149, female 51.2%, mean age 53.2). Clinical, convergent and discriminant validity of the CarerQol were evaluated in relation to the caregivers’ and care recipients’ EQ-5D-5L health status, and caregiving situation characteristics.ResultsAverage CarerQol-7D and CarerQol-VAS scores were 76.0 (SD 16.2) and 6.8 (SD 2.3), respectively. CarerQol-7D and CarerQol-VAS scores were significantly correlated with caregiving time (r = − 0.257; − 0.212), caregivers’ EQ-5D-5L scores (r = 0.453; 0.326) and the CarerQol-7D also with care recipients’ EQ-5D-5L scores (r = 0.247). CarerQol-7D scores differed significantly with relevant caregiving characteristics (e.g. nature and severity of care recipients’ health status, sharing household) and both the CarerQol-7D and CarerQol-VAS with the overall care experience.ConclusionOur findings confirmed the validity of the Hungarian language version of the CarerQol and support the cross-cultural validity of the instrument. CarerQol-7D scores performed better in distinguishing caregiving situation characteristics than the general happiness measure CarerQol-VAS. Care recipients’ health status was only weakly associated with informal caregivers’ care-related quality of life and happiness. Caregivers’ own health and caregiving circumstances were more strongly associated with these scores.
Highlights
Care provided by family members, friends or other acquaintances, often unpaid, makes up a significant part of the total amount of long-term care provided to individuals in need of help or support due to health problems or frailty as a consequence of ageing
We explored whether individual EQ-5D-5L domain scores were associated with the CarerQol-7D and CarerQol-visual analogue scale (VAS) scores
The distribution of health problems across the EQ-5D-5L domains for caregivers and care recipients are presented in a supplementary file (Online Resource 2)
Summary
Care provided by family members, friends or other acquaintances, often unpaid, makes up a significant part of the total amount of long-term care provided to individuals in need of help or support due to health problems or frailty as a consequence of ageing. This type of voluntary help is commonly called informal care. It has been advocated to include the effects of interventions on informal caregivers in policy decision-making and (economic) evaluations of health and social care interventions [4, 5] Such inclusion can have a significant impact on cost-effectiveness of health and social care interventions [6]. There is an increasing need to measure and value informal care, using validated methods that allow comparisons across populations with different caregiving contexts, help to reduce the methodological heterogeneity and increase transferability of results across countries
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