Development of an Attitude Scale for Home Care

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Health Services Research
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Home care services are essential for patient well-being and healthcare system efficiency.
• Accurate assessment of attitudes towards home care is crucial for effective service delivery and personnel selection.
• Existing tools may not adequately capture the multifaceted attitudes relevant to home healthcare.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate attitudes towards home care services.
• To develop and validate a reliable and robust measurement instrument for assessing these attitudes.
• To provide a tool for selecting personnel suited for home care roles.

Main Methods:

• A methodological study involving 290 health school students.
• Utilized theoretical frameworks including Mary Albrecht's nursing model, Jean Watson's theory of human caring, and Leslie Jean Neal's theory.
• Employed confirmatory factor analysis to establish the psychometric properties of the developed scale.

Main Results:

• The proposed model demonstrated appropriate fit indices (e.g., RMSEA=.057, CFI=.89), supporting the scale's structure.
• The Attitude Scale for Home Care (ASHC) comprises 3 subdimensions and 29 items.
• The scale achieved a high Cronbach's alpha of .93, indicating excellent internal consistency.

Conclusions:

• The Attitude Scale for Home Care (ASHC) is a valid and reliable instrument.
• ASHC can be effectively utilized for measuring attitudes pertinent to home care.
• The scale is recommended for use in the selection process for home care service personnel.