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Abstract
Purpose: Family caregivers are essential assets in the rehabilitation process, and their psychophysical health should represent a concern for healthcare services. This study aims to investigate the psychometric properties of the Adult Carer Quality of Life Questionnaire, Italian version, and its convergent-discriminant validity with measures of caring burden, resilience, health, and well-being.
Materials and Methods: Participants were 591 parents (89.2% females; aged 25–69) of children treated as outpatients in 14 centers of “Istituto Medea – La Nostra Famiglia”, an Italian rehabilitation institution. They completed: Adult Carer Quality of Life Questionnaire, a 40-item scale assessing care-related challenges, resources, and benefits; Caregiver Burden Inventory; Resilience Scale for Adults; Satisfaction With Life Scale; Health Survey SF-36. The psychometric properties of the Adult Carer Quality of Life Questionnaire were investigated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and reliability evaluation; correlation coefficients assessed convergent and discriminant validity with burden and well-being measures.
Results: The original eight-factor structure of the Adult Carer Quality of Life Questionnaire showed good adequacy and internal consistency; convergent and discriminant validity with measures of burden, resilience, satisfaction, physical and mental health were satisfactory.
Conclusions: The Italian version of the Adult Carer Quality of Life Questionnaire is a reliable and valid instrument to assess caregivers’ perceived challenges and resources. As a parsimonious and easily administrable tool, it can be used to evaluate caregivers’ quality of life and related interventions.
Family caregivers are essential assets for the rehabilitation process, and their challenges and resources need to be considered by healthcare services.
Information on caregivers’ frailties to be reduced and strengths to be empowered allows to design interventions promoting well-being and social integration of people with disabilities and their families.
The Adult Carer Quality of Life is a comprehensive measure of burden and well-being dimensions that can be easily administered to caregivers of any age.
Implications for Rehabilitation
Acknowledgements
This study was made possible by the engagement and dedication of many people. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the directors of all the rehabilitation centers who recruited the participants; psychologists, and social workers who helped in data collection, and family caregivers who provided their invaluable contribution to the study.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.