Caring behaviors perceived by elderly residents of long-term care facilities: scale development and psychometric assessment.

BACKGROUND To meet the growing need for relationship-centered nursing practice and for nursing school accreditation in Taiwan, nursing school curricula must include training in care for elderly populations in institutional settings. However, educators lack tools for evaluating student performance in such settings. The few tools currently available for measuring the caring in nurses perceived by elderly residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs) are either inappropriate for education purposes or are culturally inappropriate for elderly populations in Taiwan. OBJECTIVES To develop a scale for measuring the caring behaviors of caregivers or student volunteers as perceived by a Taiwanese population of elderly residents of LTCFs and to establish the psychometric characteristics of the scale. METHODS This study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1, the researchers comprehensively reviewed the literature on caring. Based on the review, an Elderly Resident-Perceived Caring Scale (EPCS) was developed to measure the caring behaviors perceived by LTCF residents. To establish content and face validity, the items on the scale were reviewed by six experts in two rounds of Delphi study and by four elderly laypersons. In Phase 2, a convenience sample of 297 elderly residents from 18 representative elderly care facilities (i.e., skilled nursing facilities, independent living facilities, and assisted living facilities) in Taiwan were recruited to test the construct validity and reliability of the EPCS. RESULTS The 14-item, 2-dimension questionnaire developed in this study explained 64.33% of the variance in caring perceived by the residents. Factor I, Comforting, included 11 items. Factor II, Encouraging, included 3 items. Cronbach's α values were .924 for the total scale and .930 and .844 for the Comforting and Encouraging, respectively. CONCLUSION The psychometric qualities of the EPCS were supported. However, further testing of the scale is needed to confirm its psychometric properties in a larger sample.