Caregiver Burden Inventory

Abstract

The present study was carried out to develop an indigenous scale on caregiver burden for the assessment of caregivers who care for patients with chronic illness. The non-probability purposive sampling strategy was used in the study. To generate the items, 8 caregivers of dementia patients were interviewed at the outdoor patient ward of Department of Neurology, General Hospital, Lahore. Later on, for the validation of the study, sample of (N=150) caregivers were taken and the initial item pool was administered on them at the outdoor patient ward of Neurology at General Hospital and Services Hospital. Component factor analysis revealed 4 factors which were labeled as financial and physical burden, emotional caregiver burden and patient’s dependency, psychological burden and social burden. Item analysis revealed moderate to high levels of inter-item correlations. Total 24 items were retained. Each item of the scales described a situation which carried potential caregiver burden. Reliability analysis revealed that subscales had alpha values.92, .74, .75 and .81 respectively, much greater than the required value.