Development and testing of the Family Caregiving Factors Inventory (FCFI) for home health assessment in Taiwan

This paper describes the development and psychometric testing of the Family Caregiving Factors Inventory (FCFI). Data were collected from 97 caregivers of frail elders in Taiwan to examine the validity and reliability of the four FCFI scales: caregiving resources, caregiver self-expectations, caregiving task difficulty, and knowledge of the care receiver. Acceptable test-retest and internal consistency reliabilities were found, though inter-rater reliability was unsatis-factory for caregiving task difficulty and knowledge of the care receiver scales. Testing of hypothesized relationships between the FCFI and related variables supported the construct validity of the FCFI. Confirmatory factor analysis with good overall model fits also supported the construct validity of the FCFI scales. In its present form, the FCFI can facilitate home health assessment and problem identification for families with frail elders. Studies with larger samples are needed to further verify the measurement models.