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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| A valid instrument for measuring informal care time for people with dementia | | Author(s) | Simone Neubauer, Rolf Holle, Petra Menn |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 24, no 3, March 2009 |
| Pages | pp 275-282 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/gps |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Informal care ; Time duration ; Measurement ; Evaluation ; Germany. |
| Annotation | An economic evaluation of dementia-related interventions from a selective perspective should take account of informal caregiving. Within the German IDA study (Dementia Care Initiative in Primary Practice), informal care time for people with dementia living at home is assessed. The authors applied a German adaptation of the Resource Utilisation in Dementia (RUD) questions on informal care, which distinguishes three categories of informal care activities: Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), instrumental ADL (IADL) and supervision. In contrast to the original version, the time of all informal caregivers who are involved for caring for the person was included. The questionnaire was completed as a computer-assisted telephone interview at baseline and after 1 year. To test the plausibility of the questionnaire, seven hypotheses about the reported informal care time were proposed. Nearly all results confirmed these hypotheses. Informal care time as well as changes over time correlated with the patient's physical and mental health status. Considering the time of other informal caregivers led to slightly higher correlations (not significant). The results indicate that interviewees seem to underestimate particularly the time of supervision of other informal caregivers. In sum, the instrument gives plausible results and is suited for measuring informal care time as well as changes over time. If it is not possible to directly interview each caregiver involved, it is of great importance to identify and interview the primary informal caregiver in order to prevent an underestimation of total informal care time. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-090421215 A |
| Classmark | EA: P6: 4N: 3R: 4C: 767 |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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