Development of a scale to measure parents’ care agency regarding their children that complements the children’s self-care

Abstract

 This study aimed to develop a scale that measures parents’ agency to care as a complement to self-care in hospitalized children, and test its reliability and validity. Therefore, we conducted a questionnaire survey on 300 families raising children admitted to a child hospital to verify the scale’s reliability and validity. Data of 95 participants (valid response rate: 85.5%) were analyzed. Eleven items and two factors were extracted using item analysis and exploratory factor analysis, respectively. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the goodness of fit of the hypothesis model obtained by exploratory factor analysis. In terms of reliability, the Cronbach α coefficient was 0.879 for all 11 items on the scale and ranged from 0.788 to 0.823 for each factor. The correlation coefficient with “degree of acquisition of care capacity” as an external criterion was 0.552. Hence, the scale had a certain degree of reliability and validity. Therefore, this scale can be used in clinical settings in future.