STAFF-BASED INDIVIDUALIZED CARE INVENTORY: PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE TURKISH VERSION

Introduction: The Individualized Care Inventory-short form is a 22-item self-report measure with four sub-dimensions: knowing the resident, residents' autonomy and choice, staff-to-resident communication, and staff-to-staff communication. The inventory is used for in the context of dementia care. The present study aimed to assess the inventory's psychometric properties with a sample of formal caregivers from nursing homes. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted with 184 formal caregivers from 13 different nursing homes in Istanbul between July and September 2020. This study used translation and back translation for the scale's language equivalence and expert opinion for the content validity. The reliability and validity were tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, test-retest correlation analyses and internal consistency. Results: The content validity index for the inventory was 0.93. In the construct validity analysis, four sub-dimensions corresponding to the original factor structure were derived for the inventory. Cronbach's alpha values for the factors, namely knowing the resident (alpha = 0.618), autonomy and choice of the resident (alpha = 0.768), and communication (alpha = 0.713) were satisfactory. The tests-retests was conducted in a 15-25-day intervals, and all sub-dimensions were positively correlated (r: 0.236-0.390) (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The Turkish Individualized Care Inventory is a valid and reliable tool that can be used to measure the individualized care approaches of formal caregivers in nursing homes.