The development and validation of strength and empowerment scale for caregivers of persons with psychiatric disability

Abstract

ABSTRACT Most recently, the strength perspective and empowerment has been viewed as an important social work approach. The purpose of the study is to investigate the contexts of strengths perspective and its implication on the care of psychiatric disabilities. This study intended to develop a caregiving scale applied to the Taiwanese population by utilising the Taiwanese participants. The scale would provide practitioners with an instrument to evaluate the attitude of caregivers, the family positively, family relationship, resources and sense of empowerment. There were 209 caregivers participated in the study. This study utilised EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis) to find the factor structure and CFA (Confirmatory Factor Analysis) to test the internal reliability and validity. The scale has a good model of fit and good internal reliability.96. Four domains of the scale were family positively, family relationship and support, formal resources availability and empowerment. The scale could be applied to evaluate the effectiveness of empowerment intervention.