Development and validation of professional needs of care questionnaire for family caregivers of stroke survivors

Objective To develop a questionnaire on the professional needs of care for family caregivers of stroke survivors and test the reliability and validity. Methods Based on the family system theory and family support model, the first draft of questionnaire was formed through literature review and in-depth qualitative interview, and the test draft was formed through expert consultation and pre-experiment. The qualified caregivers in 5 community health service centers of Nanyang Road, linshanzhai, hanghai East Road, high tech Zone and Qinling Road in Zhengzhou from May to August 2018 were selected as the research objects for questionnaire survey. 240 valid questionnaires were selected and tested to form a formal questionnaire. Results The cumulative variance contribution rate of four common factors extracted by exploratory factor analysis was 67.343%, the overall Cronbach's α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.919, the overall retest reliability was 0.914, the total content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.98, the content validity index (I-CVI) of each item was above 0.80, the correlation coefficient between each item and the total score of the questionnaire was 0.424-0.652, and the correlation coefficient between each dimension was 0.127-0. 566, the correlation coefficient between each dimension and total score was 0.592-0.785, the formal questionnaire included 4 dimensions and 29 items. Conclusions The questionnaire has good reliability and validity, which can be used to evaluate the professional care needs of home-based stroke caregivers. Key words: Stroke; Family caregivers; Professional needs of care; Reliability; Validity