Development and Validation of "Caregiver Burden Scale-Indian Population"

Caregiver burden is always a neglected domain, and assessment of burden with available instruments developed in one country is neither reliable nor valid because of different cultural, ethical, religious, and other personal values. This study is an attempt to develop an appropriate instrument which can assess the burden on caregivers from the Indian subcontinent and other Asian countries. This work is an attempt to develop and standardization of CBS-IP using content and construct validity.

The study was conducted with a total of 125 (55 - initial interview + 25 - pilot study + 45 - construct validity) caregivers of individual with chronic neurologically ill patients. Content and construct validation was performed as follows: (1) search of relevant electronic databanks and use of experts and caregivers' opinions to prepare appropriate content, review, and correction of the content through discussions with experts. (2) Content validity has been established by computing content validity index (CVI). (3) Construct validity has been established by correlating (Pearson's-r) with another standardized instrument (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised) using multitrait procedure.

Using CVI procedure, scale-level CVI (S-CVI) universal agreement is 0.889; S-CVI average is 0.898. The item-level CVI is 0.90. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) was obtained by comparing caregiver burden scale-Indian population (CBS-IP) total with extraversion, r = -0.440, n = 45, P = 0.002; CBS-IP total with neuroticism, r = 0.228, n = 45, P = 0.132; and CBS-IP total with psychoticism, r = -0.011, n = 45, P = 0.942.

We believe that the new tool CBS-IP is a good empirical instrument for evaluating stressors on informal caregivers in India and possibly in some other countries in Asia.