Many studies have focused on the importance of the informal care provided by caregivers and on its impact in terms of worsening quality of life and increased burden. The aim of the present study is to analyze the psychometric validity and reliability of the Caregiver Needs Assessment (CNA) questionnaire, which has been built to investigate the needs (related to assistance) perceived by caregivers of severely impaired patients, particularly in the first stages of their illness.
Methods: The CNA was administered to 226 family caregivers (24.3% males) of 197 patients (50.8% males) hospitalized for neuromotor rehabilitation after a stroke, head injury, Lateral Amyotrophic Sclerosis, Parkinson or other severely impairing diseases.
Results: The instrument was tested on a large sample (KMO = 0.83) of heterogeneous caregivers. Explorative and confirmatory factor analysis, performed on a two subgroup random subdivision of the sample, showed the presence of two factors with good internal consistency: the factor "needs of emotional and social support" (alpha = 0.765) and the factor "needs of information and communication" (alpha = 0.742). The structural equation modeling confirms the goodness of fit of the 2-factor structure (RMSEA = 0.073; SRMR = 0.1; CFI = 0.96). We observed a positive correlation (p < 0.01) between the factor "needs of emotional and social support" of the CNA and other questionnaires aimed at assessing psychological wellbeing, and between the factor "needs of information and communication" and the factor "needs for knowledge about the disease" of the Family Strain Questionnaire, showing good convergent validity. We also observed high Pearson correlation coefficients (0.942 and 0.965) between test-retest measurements of both factors in the CNA.
Conclusion: The statistical analysis confirms the good psychometric properties of the CNA questionnaire. For its brevity and ease in compilation the CNA is promising practical tool aimed at assessing caregivers' needs in order to personalize a programme of psychological support, to measure it's outcome and to provide comparison of the different needs in different diseases.