A new tool for measuring the caregiver burden of children with intellectual disability

Abstract

A new tool was designed to evaluate the level of burden experienced by caregivers of children with intellectual disability (ID) in the northern Indian context. The instrument has been utilized to collect data from a sample of 100 participants from Rajasthan, India. The tool’s overall relevancy was determined to be .98, while its clarity was established to be .99. Factor analysis was conducted for assessing the construct validity of the tool which resulted in nine dimensions. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient resulted in a value of .836. The tool, therefore, can be utilized by researchers to track the level of burden experienced by caregivers of children with ID, and to develop interventions aimed at this population.

KEYWORDS:

• Content validity
• caregiver burden
• intellectual disability
• tool development
• reliability

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the inputs and support from the Rajasthan Mahila Kalyan Mandal Sansthan, Ajmer and is grateful for its cooperation, assistance and facilitating the invaluable collaboration of content experts. We also want to thank all the participants for their contributions. This study was part of a Ph.D. thesis in the Department of Social Work, Central University of Rajasthan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors did not receive any funding for the present study.