Development and validation of the Brief Assessment Scale for Caregivers in Chinese

Chinese family caregivers in the United States experience high rates of burden. Studies in this population require culturally appropriate and valid instruments.

To adapt a Chinese version of the Brief Assessment Scale for Caregivers (BASC), a tool measuring positive and negative effects of caregiving.

New items for the Chinese adaptation were generated from the literature, an interdisciplinary professional group, and caregiver focus groups. The new items were translated into Chinese, added to the original 14-item BASC, then administered to caregivers in two surveys (n=205); participants also completed Chinese versions of the Caregiver Burden Inventory-Chinese (CBI-C), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and the Katz Index for Activities of Daily Living. Item reduction and exploration of internal consistency, reliability and validity using correlational, exploratory, and confirmatory factor analysis were performed.

Factor analysis and item-total correlations supported reduction in the number of new items. The final BASC-Chinese (BASC-C) included 10 new items plus the 14 items from the original tool with an overall α coefficient of 0.79 for the 24-item scale. Three Chinese-specific factors-cultural strain, decision-making strain, and emotional strain-showed α coefficients of 0.69 to 0.79. Significant first order correlations were found between the BASC-C and previously validated measures (total BASC-C with HADS Anxiety [r=0.64, p<0.001], HADS Depression [r=0.60, p<0.001], and CBI-C [r=0.60, p<0.001]). Partial correlations indicated that the new Chinese items provided information supplemental to the original BASC.

This study suggests that the BASC-C is a valid measure of caregiver burden among Chinese family caregivers.