Development and evaluation of the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale - Dementia

Abstract

Purpose To develop and evaluate a measurement scale for multi-domain assessment of the quality of life of family caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) in Singapore, a multi-ethic society in South-East Asia where English is the lingua franca. Methods Items from the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS), which was originally developed in the context of advanced cancers, were adopted as candidate items. Furthermore, a multi-disciplinary panel reviewed dementia-specific caregiver quality of life scales to identified items not covered in SCQOLS for inclusion as candidate items. A pilot study of 31 family caregivers of PWD was conducted to solicit inputs on candidate items; 102 family caregivers of PWD were surveyed for evaluation of the scale’s measurement properties. Results Factor analysis confirmed a 5-domain structure of the 63 candidate items. The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation was 0.056 and Comparative Fit Index was 0.928. Convergent validity of the total and domain scores was demonstrated in terms of correlation with the Brief Assessment Scale for Caregivers and its sub-scales. The scores also showed an expected pattern of correlation with hours spent on caregiving per week. Known-group validity was demonstrated by differences in mean scores between functional staging groups. Cronbach’s alpha of the total and domain scores ranged from 0.89 to 0.95. Test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient) ranged from 0.77 to 0.92. Conclusions The Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale – Dementia (SCQOLS-D) is a quality of life measurement scale for family caregivers of persons with dementia that is valid and reliable.

Development of a short form of the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale – Dementia: SCQOLS-D-15

“…This is a secondary analysis of the data collected from 102 family caregivers of PWD for the development and validation of the SCQOLS-D [ 12 ]. These caregivers were recruited from January to November 2019 from the Department of Geriatric Medicine of the Singapore General Hospital.…”

“…The study design has been described in detail previously [ 12 ]. In brief, family caregivers of a PWD who were aged 21 years or older and were living with the PWD or spent at least 10 h a week in giving care to the PWD were eligible to participate in this study.…”

“…The baseline survey consisted of the SCQOLS-D, questions on caregiver demographics, the Brief Assessment Scale for Caregivers (BASC), and the PWD’s functional staging assessment. The SCQOLS-D has 63 items divided into 5 domains: Physical Well-being (PW; 12 items), Mental Well-being (MW; 18 items), Experience & Meaning (EM; 16 items), Impact on Daily Life (DL; 13 items) and Financial Well-being (FW; 4 items) [ 12 ]. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale, from not at all (0) to very much (4).…”

“…Research in the USA found that Asian American caregivers spent more time on caregiving than caregivers of other ethnicity [ 11 ]. Therefore, the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale – Dementia (SCQOLS-D) were recently developed for Asian caregivers of PWD [ 12 ]. This is an extension of the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS) [ 13 , 14 ] that was developed using data from caregivers of cancer patients by adding 12 dementia-specific items derived from the three abovementioned dementia-specific instruments [ 6 – 8 ] or solicited from semi-structured interviews with caregivers of PWD [ 12 ].…”

“…Measurement properties of these short forms have been demonstrated [ 15 ]. The 63-item SCQOLS-D inherited the 5-domain structure and the scoring algorithm from the SCQOLS [ 12 – 14 ]. It is intuitive to consider the SCQOLS-15 as an abbreviated version of the SCQOLS-D for overall and domain-specific QoL assessment because of the commonality of caregiving experience to these caregivers.…”