Paper
Monday, November 5, 2007

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This presentation is part of : Family Health Strategies
Assessing Reactions of Family Caregivers of Persons with Alzheimer Disease
Elizabeth W. Gonzalez, PhD, APRN, BC, College of Nursing & Health Professions, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Learning Objective #1: Discuss the psychometric properties of a Caregiver Burden Scale as used in minority women.
Learning Objective #2: Discuss the implications of assessing specific types of stress that are salient to family caregivers of person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
It has been estimated that 80% of persons with Alzheimer’s disease are cared for at home by family members. With public policies that limit accessible and affordable formal care services, informal caregivers, largely women, will continue to bear the overwhelming responsibility for providing care to their loved ones. It is well documented that despite frustration and stress experienced by most family caregivers of persons with dementia they are willing to sacrifice anything to care for their loved ones at home as long as possible. Standardized instruments that assess specific type of caregiver stress salient at a given point in time should be useful to clinicians and researchers who assist family caregivers. This study describes the psychometric properties of a 14-item scale that assess caregivers’ objective and subjective reactions to caregiving.

Method: One hundred twenty-one minority women family caregivers who were living with and caring for person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease participated in the study. Family caregivers were interviewed face to face and responded to questionnaires that includes demographic information, caregiver burden scale and CESD. Methods for estimating internal consistency and homogeneity were used to test the reliability of the scale.

Findings: Factor analysis on caregiver burden scale identified three domains: perceived infringement on caregiver’s life, stress due to the emotional impact of caregiving responsibilities, and perception that care responsibilities are overly demanding. These domains have Cronbach’s alphas that ranged from .70 to .86. Evidence of their psychometric properties compared to CESD was found in two domains: subjective burden (r=.34, p.00) and perceived stress (r= .49, p =.00).

 Conclusion: Further application and testing of this instrument should be useful to researchers and practitioners who assist family caregivers with daily care decisions. This knowledge should help providers identify interventions that are appropriately matched to the source of stress.

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