A confirmatory factor analysis of the Caregiving Appraisal Scale for caregivers of home-based ventilator-assisted individuals.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To confirm the underlying dimensions of the Caregiving Appraisal Scale (CAS) with use of data collected from caregivers of home-based ventilator-assisted individuals (VAIs). DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SETTING: Residences of home-based VAIs. SAMPLE Two hundred seventy-seven primary family caregivers of VAIs. MEASURES: Twenty-eight-item CAS developed by Lawton et al. (1989), and an investigator-developed instrument to assess physical health and sociodemographic characteristics of both VAIs and their caregivers. INTERVENTION None. ANALYSIS: Confirmatory factor analysis with principal components extraction. An oblique (oblimin) solution was used for rotation of the factor matrices. The number of common factors needed to obtain the best fit of the factor model was determined with use of maximum-likelihood estimation. Confirmatory factor analysis with linear structural equation modeling was also performed. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis did not fully replicate the factor structure proposed by Lawton et al. CONCLUSIONS: The model proposed by Lawton et al. provides a useful foundation for examining the appraisal of family caregivers of home-based VAIs. Additional development work is needed for the CAS.