Psychometric characteristics of the caregiver burden inventory in caregivers of adults with heart failure.

BACKGROUND: A better understanding of caregiver burden and its determinants is essential to support caregivers. Many instruments have been developed to measure caregiver burden in various illness contexts, but few have been psychometrically tested for caregivers of heart failure patients.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to test the validity (factorial and concurrent validity) and reliability (internal consistency) of the caregiver burden inventory (CBI) in a cohort of caregivers of heart failure patients.

METHODS: This was a secondary analysis from a cross-sectional study on heart failure patients and their caregivers enrolled from various Italian outpatient centres. The factorial validity of the CBI was tested with confirmatory factor analysis, and concurrent validity was tested correlating CBI scores with the short form-12 health survey scores. The internal consistency reliability was assessed with Cronbach's alpha.

RESULTS: In total, 505 caregivers of heart failure patients (52.2% women, mean age 56.59±14.9 years) were enrolled. Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the original five-factor model: time-dependence, developmental, physical, social and emotional burden. This model fits the data better than the single-factor model, and the dimensions showed high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.91 for time-dependence burden, 0.92 for developmental burden, 0.88 for physical burden, 0.89 for social burden and 0.93 for emotional burden; 0.96 for the total score of burden).

CONCLUSION: The CBI proved to be a good multidimensional instrument for evaluating the burden in caregivers of heart failure patients and can be used in clinical practice and research. This tool can be considered to tailor interventions aimed at improving caregiver outcomes.