Measuring Caregiving Appraisal

TLDR

Stress theory proposes that caregiver appraisal extends beyond the traditional concept of caregiving burden. The study examined how caregivers of disabled older adults appraise the caregiving process. The authors constructed an item pool covering subjective burden, satisfaction, impact, mastery, and ideology, and used component analysis on 632 respite caregivers and 239 additional caregivers to identify factors matching the hypothesized dimensions. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed subjective burden, caregiving satisfaction, and caregiving impact factors, and composite scores demonstrated strong psychometric quality.

Abstract

Caregivers of disabled older people were studied in terms of their appraisal of the caregiving process. A conceptual approach based on stress theory suggested that such appraisal was broader than the traditional term, "caregiving burden." An item pool was constructed using traditional and new items to represent dimensions of subjective caregiving burden, caregiving satisfaction, caregiving impact, caregiving mastery, and traditional caregiving ideology. Component analysis of responses of 632 caregivers in a respite research project yielded factors that corresponded with those hypothesized; the content of similar factored responses from 239 caregivers in another study was quite similar. A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in acceptance of the subjective burden, caregiving satisfaction, and caregiving impact factors. Used as composite item scores, evidence of their psychometric quality is presented.