Subjective caregiver burden: validity of the 10-item short version of the Burden Scale for Family Caregivers BSFC-s

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Hannes Grau¹  Elmar Graessel¹  Thomas Lichte²  Hendrik Berth³ 

[1] Centre of Health Services Research in Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Schwabachanlage 6, D-91054, Erlangen, Germany;Institute of General Practice and Family Medicine, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Leipziger Straße 44, D-39120, Magdeburg, Germany;Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, Fetscherstr. 74, D-01307, Dresden, Germany;

关键词: Subjective caregiver burden;    Short version of the Burden Scale for Family Caregivers;    Factor analysis;    Reliability;    Validity;    Item difficulty;    Discriminatory power;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-14-23

 received in 2013-11-05, accepted in 2014-02-12,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSubjective burden is a central variable describing the situation encountered by family caregivers. The 10-item short version of the Burden Scale for Family Caregivers (BSFC-short/BSFC-s) was developed to provide an economical measure of this variable. The present study examined the reliability and validity of the BSFC-s.MethodsComprehensive data from “the IDA project” were the basis of the calculations, which included 351 dyads and examined medical data on people with dementia, interview data from their family caregivers, and health insurance data. A factor analysis was performed to explore the structure of the BSFC-s; Cronbach’s alpha was used to evaluate the internal consistency of the scale. The items were analyzed to determine the item difficulty and the discriminatory power. Construct validity was tested with five hypotheses. To establish the predictive validity of the BSFC-s, predictors of institutionalization at a follow-up time of 2.5 years were analyzed (binary logistic regression).ResultsThe BSFC-s score adhered to a one-factor structure. Cronbach's alpha for the complete scale was .92. A significant increase in the BSFC-s score was observed when dementia progressed, disturbing behavior occurred more frequently, care requirements increased, and when caregivers were diagnosed with depression. Caregiver burden was the second strongest predictor of institutionalization out of a total of four significant predictors.ConclusionsAll hypotheses that referred to the construct validity were supported. The BSFC-short with its ten items is a very economical instrument for assessing the caregiver’s total subjective burden in a short time frame. The BSFC-s score has predictive validity for the institutionalization of people with dementia. Therefore it is an appropriate outcome measure to evaluate caregiver interventions. The scale is available for free in 20 languages (http://www.caregiver-burden.eu). This availability facilitates the comparison of international research findings.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Graessel et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.