Adequacy of two organizing principles for the classification of lay caregiving decisions

The specific aims of this study were to examine two organizing principles for caregiver planning and the consistency with which four nurses independently classified 1,096 caregiving decisions into one of 12 categories of a taxonomic structure. The typology for classification consisted of a coordinate for goal structure made up of three categories and a coordinate for human need orientation-made up of four categories. The 3-by-4 classification schema was used to develop a coding manual of theoretical and operational definitions for 12 mutually exclusive cell categories of caregiver planning. The criterion for consistency of the nurses' classification judgments was the assignment of a caregiving decision to a cell category identical to the a priori assignment of the principal investigator. The findings from the study provide initial support for content validity of the organizing principles for caregiver planning and interrater reliability of the nurses' judgments when controlling for the effect of chance agreements. The nurses "correctly" classified 63.75% of the targeted caregiving decisions and did not "incorrectly" classify 83.74% of the decisions. The respective coefficient kappas for agreements made on the basis of goal structure and human need orientation were .72 and .65.