Validity and reliability of the Family Empowerment Scale for caregivers of adults with mental health issues

Abstract

Accessible summary What is known on the subject? • Empowerment of family caregivers of adults with mental health issues has received increasing attention among mental health nurses in Japan and has been recognized as a new goal of family interventions. • The Family Empowerment Scale (FES) was originally developed to measure the empowerment status of parents of children with emotional disorders. However, it was later applied to broader health issues. What this paper adds to existing knowledge? • We developed a Japanese version of the FES for family caregivers of adults with mental health issues (FES-AMJ) and examined the validity and reliability among parents. Results showed that the FES-AMJ had acceptable concurrent validity and reliability; however, insufficient construct validity was found, especially for the subscale regarding the service system. What are the implications for practice? • Further studies need to modify the scale. Clarification of ideal family empower-ment status in the service system through discussion with mental health nurses and family caregivers may be important. Abstract Introduction: The Family Empowerment Scale (FES) was originally developed for parents of children with emotional disorders. In Japan, family empowerment is gaining increasing attention and may be one goal of nursing interventions. Aim: To develop a Japanese version of the FES for family caregivers of adults with mental health issues and to study the validity and reliability of this scale among parents. Method: We translated the FES into Japanese and administered this self-report questionnaire to 275 parents. Results: The multitrait scaling analysis revealed acceptable convergent validity and insufficient discriminant validity among all sub-scales. In particular, all items of the Service system subscale had insufficient discrimi-nant and/or convergent validity. Each subscale significantly correlated with the indicator of empowerment. The intraclass correlation coefficients of each subscale were .855-.917. Cronbach's alpha of each factor ranged from .867 to .895. Discussion: The Service system subscale may not linearly reflect family empowerment, and instead may depend on unclear roles of family caregivers of adults, disorder severity or insufficient services. Implications for practice: Further studies need to modify the

Can a carer (peer) led psychoeducation programme improve mental health carers well-being, reduce burden and enrich empowerment: a service evaluation study

“…The carers attending the training completed three assessment questionnaires; these were the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (Tennant et al, 2007), The Burden Assessment Scale (BAS) (Reinhard et al, 1994) and the Family Empowerment Scale (FES) (Kageyama et al, 2016) (Table II).…”

Characteristics of Parents With High Expressed Emotion and Related Factors

“…The Community/Political subscale pertains to legislative bodies, policymakers, agencies, and community members; it assesses parents' advocacy efforts on behalf of the population. A Japanese version of the FES for family caregivers of adults with mental disorders was developed and tested for its validity and reliability among parents (Kageyama et al, 2016).…”

“…Parents' endurance of this challenging situation may be further exacerbated by engagement in behaviors that are commonly observed in those with high EE. In Japan, mental health practitioners sometimes label parents as high EE to denote an unfavorable personality (Kageyama, 2016). This type of labeling by practitioners may complicate an already difficult situation and may inhibit cooperation by the person in recovery, the provider, and the parents.…”

Predictors of Quality of Life Among an International Sample of Mothers of Children 12 and Under With Corpus Callosum Disorders

“…There are 34 statements and a 5-point response scale for each statement: 1 = never, 2 = seldom, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often, and 5 = very often. Cronbach's alphas have ranged from .867 to .895 for the five subscales (Kageyama et al, 2016) and .84 to .90 for all items (Vuorenmaa et al, 2013). Concurrent validity has been reported for families who participated in service activities in school settings (Vuorenmaa et al, 2013).…”