Reliability and Validity of Scales Measuring Burden, Satisfaction, and Support Skills of People Engaging in Peer Support Activities for Patients with Chronic Diseases

Abstract

Purpose: The objective of this study was to develop scales to measure sense of burden, satisfaction with activities, and the support skills of peer supporters who engage in peer support activities for people with chronic diseases, and to examine its reliability and validity.

Method: A questionnaire survey was conducted with 140 peer supporters in three peer support organizations in Japan. Participants were asked to respond to scales developed with reference to interviews and previous studies, as well as items related to demographic characteristics, disease characteristics, and characteristics related to peer support activities. The distributions of the responses to the scale items were examined. The factor structures were confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, the relationship between demographic characteristics, disease characteristics, and characteristics related to peer support activities and scale scores were analyzed.

Results: Responses were obtained from 64 peer supporters of those with chronic diseases. In the five items of the satisfaction scale, the ceiling effect was suspected because 70% of the responses were concentrated on “agree,” which was the largest value, A good fit was obtained for the two-factor structure of the support skills, satisfaction, and burden scales. The burden was significantly related to frequency of activities, satisfaction to availability of rewards and anxiety, and support skills to physical and mental health.

Conclusion: Although the developed scale still had issues with construct validity and content validity of the technology scale, its factorial validity and internal consistency were confirmed.