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Development and Initial Validation of the Transportation Support Scale
Shauna Fossum1, Dwight Mazmanian2, Helle Møller3
1Shauna Fossum, MHSc, is Public Education Coordinator, Alzheimer Society of Thunder Bay, Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada. At the time of this research, Fossum was Graduate Student, Department of Health Sciences, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
A new Transportation Support Scale (TSS) was developed to measure the impact of driving cessation on care partners. The scale shows promise for understanding and supporting individuals who take on transportation responsibilities for former drivers.
Area of Science:
- Gerontology
- Transportation Studies
- Psychometrics
Background:
- Driving cessation significantly impacts older adults and their care partners, often women.
- Existing tools do not specifically address the effects of driving cessation on care partners.
- There is a need for a validated instrument to assess care partners' experiences with transportation responsibilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate the Transportation Support Scale (TSS).
- The TSS aims to measure both negative and positive responses of care partners to assuming transportation duties.
- To provide clinicians with a tool to assess the impact of driving cessation on care partners.
Main Methods:
- Item generation (98 items) followed by qualitative pretesting with care partners (Phase 1, n=11).
- Item reduction and psychometric evaluation (22 items) with a larger sample of care partners (Phase 2, n=66).
- Community-based setting for participant recruitment.
Main Results:
- The Transportation Support Scale (TSS) was finalized with 22 items.
- The TSS demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .88).
- 35% of care partners reported a high negative impact from providing transportation after driving cessation.
Conclusions:
- The TSS exhibits adequate preliminary psychometric properties for assessing care partner experiences.
- Further research is needed to establish test-retest reliability and further validate the TSS.
- The TSS can inform the development of support services for care partners of former drivers.
