ACTA FAC MED NAISS 2021;38(3):257-269

UDC:616.61-005.8   DOI:10.5937/afmnai38-29501

Original article

Designing and Psychometric Properties of Coping Strategies Scale for
Family Caregivers of Hemodialysis Patients

Nayereh Baghcheghi¹, Hamid Reza Koohestani²

¹Nursing Department, Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Saveh University of Medical Sciences, Saveh, Iran
²Medical Education Department, Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Saveh University of Medical Sciences, Saveh, Iran

SUMMARY

                  The present study tries to design and evaluate the psychometric properties of coping strategies scale for family caregivers of hemodialysis patients. This study consisted of two phases: phase one was a qualitative study to analyze the experiences of coping strategies of hemodialysis patients’ family caregivers’ (N = 14). Then, the items were extracted from the interviews and the literature. Phase two was a psychometric assessment including face validity, content validity, construct validity (N = 245) and reliability. In phase one, 89 items were extracted and after face and content validity, 56 items remained. Construct validity of the scale, based on exploratory factor analysis, removed another 22 items. The remaining 34 items contained nine subscales (active coping, positive thinking, appeal to spirituality, help seeking, altruism, acting out, self-blaming, seeking isolation, and intentional forgetting). The reliability of the scale with Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91 and its stability was obtained through test-retest (ICC = 0.9). Coping strategies scale for family caregivers of hemodialysis patients has an acceptable validity and reliability.

The tool can be used to assess effective and ineffective coping strategies in family caregivers of hemodialysis patients that may be useful for facilitating management and education of efficient coping strategies to family caregivers of hemodialysis patients.

Key words: coping strategy, family caregivers, hemodialysis, scale, validation studies