African American Dementia Caregiver Strategies Inventory: Initial descriptive and psychometric evaluation

Primary objectives of the study were: (a) to identify the most frequently used categories of cognitive-behavioral intervention (CBI) strategies used by distressed African American caregivers (CG) of persons living with dementia to address self-reported problems and; (b) to conduct an initial evaluation of the psychometric properties of the African American Dementia Caregiver Strategies Inventory (DCSI-A) in categorizing CBI strategies.

Development of the DCSI-A was divided into four steps: (a) generating a large item pool of CG intervention strategies from two parent CBI randomized controlled trials; (b) creating a preliminary version of the DCSI-A; (c) generating subsequent versions with larger number of strategy categories based on consensus agreement; and (d) finalizing the 23-item DCSI-A with coding rules, definitions, and examples. Two analytic approaches were used: (a) descriptive statistics to examine the frequency and percentage of strategy category endorsements; and (b) reliability analyses (percent agreement and kappa) to assess overall coder agreement and coder drift.

The most frequently used CG strategy categories were as follows: (a) health-related intervention strategies; (b) strategies to facilitate socialization and community activities; (c) assertiveness techniques; (d) relaxation strategies; and (e) effective thinking strategies. Average coder agreement was high (93.31%, κ = .92). Considerable stability across coders was shown across assessment intervals: 94.56% average agreement (κ = .94) for the first interval and 92.07% agreement (κ = .91) for the second interval.

Findings of this investigation showed strong initial support for the reliability of the DCSI-A and its capacity to capture diverse components of CBI for African American CGs of persons living with dementia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).