Development and field-testing of the Dementia Carer Assessment of Support Needs Tool (DeCANT)

Beskrivelse

Introduction: Caring for a person with dementia is associated with poor mental, physical, and social health, which makes it important to consider how informal carers (carers) are best supported in their caring role. At present, a robust instrument to assess carers’ support needs does not exist, and this study aimed to develop such a self-reported questionnaire.
Material and methods: A design using pilot-testing and field-testing was conducted. In the pilot-testing, eight experts, 12
carers, and seven digital users participated. In the field-testing, 301 carers of people with dementia from nine municipalities
and one dementia clinic in a hospital in Denmark participated. Items for inclusion in the Dementia Carer Assessment of
Support Needs Tool (DeCANT) were generated based on interviews and literature review. Iterative pilot-testing established
face and content validity of DeCANT using Content Validity Index and cognitive interviews. Field-testing of DeCANT among
carers was conducted as a survey.
Results: Initially, an item pool of 63 items was generated, and pilot testing reduced this to 42 items. Subsequent fieldtesting resulted in a 25-item version of DeCANT, and confirmatory factor analysis of three hypothesized models demonstrated a better fit to a four-factor model with fit indices of: χ2=775.170 (pConclusions: DeCANT is a 25-item questionnaire that can be used to help identify support needs when caring for a person with dementia to enable supportive interventions and improve carers’ health and well-being.

Periode	10 jun. 2022
Begivenhedstitel	26th Nordic Congress of Gerontology
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Konferencenummer	26
Placering	Odense, DanmarkVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International