Positive Aspects of Caregiving

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess a newly developed measure for the positive aspects of caregiving using a sample of dementia caregivers. The measure was developed and administered to 1,229 participants in a national collaborative Alzheimer's disease caregiver study and evaluated for validity and reliability using standard psychometric analyses. Factor analysis identified two components in this nine-item measure: SelfAffirmation and Outlook on Life. Cronbach's alphas for the components were .86 and .80, respectively. For the entire scale, Cronbach's alpha was .89. The Positive Aspects of Caregiving measure, tested with a large, diverse, and well-characterized sample shows promise as a valid and reliable instrument. With additional implementation and testing, the measure has the potential to substantially increase our understanding of basic caregiving research and the outcomes of intervention efforts.

Positive aspects of caregiving (PAC): Scale validation among Chinese dementia caregivers (CG)

“…The PAC scale was adopted in the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) I and II interventions to measure caregivers' positive role appraisals. Favorable caregiving appraisals, indicated by high scores on the PAC scale, were associated with better SRH (Basu, Hochhalter, & Stevens, 2013), less depression symptoms (Belle et al, 2006;Tarlow et al, 2004), as well as higher perceived competence in caregiving (Cheng, Lam, Kwok, Ng, & Fung, 2013;Semiatin & O'Connor, 2012) among caregivers. Tarlow and associates (2004) examined the structure of PAC and proposed a 9-item two-factor solution, namely self-affirmation and outlook on life.…”

“…182), and developed a 5-item caregiving satisfaction scale (Lawton, Kleban, Moss, Rovine, & Glicksman, 1989) upon which the PAC scale (Tarlow et al, 2004) was developed. The PAC scale was adopted in the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH) I and II interventions to measure caregivers' positive role appraisals.…”

“…The resultant Chinese version of the PAC scale included eleven items (Tarlow et al, 2004). We reckoned that Tarlow and associates deleted two items upon inspecting the results of the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of their data.…”

“…The extraction of components was guided by multiple criteria (Fabrigar et al, 1999;Russell, 2002) including the inspection of scree test (Cattell, 1966), eigenvalues (minimum eigenvalue for extraction = 1; Kaiser, 1960), and interpretability of components. The component loading cut-off was set at 0.45 (Tarlow et al, 2004). Cronbach's alpha was inspected for reliability testing.…”

“…However, caregivers also report gains, in terms of greater understanding on oneself, joyful moments, and enhanced relationships with their care recipients (CR), friends, and relatives when taking care of their loved ones (Cohen, Colantonio, & Vernich, 2002;Narayan, Lewis, Tornatore, Hepburn, & Corcoran-Perry, 2001;Ory, Yee, Tennstedt, & Schulz, 2000;Peacock et al, 2010). These caregiving gains tend to be negatively associated with caregiving stress on caregivers' well-being (Balducci et al, 2008;Cohen et al, 2002;Liew et al, 2010;Tarlow et al, 2004). More importantly, these gains enrich caregivers' life space and contribute to maintaining their involvement in providing care (Carbonneau, Caron, & Desrosiers, 2010;Grant & Nolan, 1993;Kramer, 1997;Louderback, 2000;McIntyre, 2003;Nolan, Grant, & Keady, 1996).…”