Factor Analysis of Caregiver Strain Questionnaire in Clinical Research

Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ) is expected to have multiple dimensions. It was the aim of this study to investigate and confirm the dimensional structure of CGSQ measured from subjects. We used rotated principal- components analysis as EPA to explore the dimensional structure of CGSQ. The first principal component explained 86% of the variance in the data. Cumulative variance for 3 factors is 99.3%. Three dimensions (objective caregiver strain, internalized subjective caregiver strain and externalized subjective caregiver strain) were found. Reliability of the latent constructs was measured with Cronbach's alpha (0.943, 0.876, 0.877). Finally, CPA demonstrated the relationship between the observed CGSQ and their underlying latent dimensions. SAS® procedures such as PROC CORR, PROC CALIS, PROC FACTOR were used for this study. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are chronic and debilitating psychiatric illnesses that affect the life quality of the patients' and their families. Onset of schizophrenia before the age of 13 years is rare, but the incidence of schizophrenia increases steadily during the adolescent years, and estimates of the lifetime prevalence range from 0.5% to 1.5%. While onset of bipolar disorder most commonly occurs in adolescence or early adulthood, 20% to 40% of adults with bipolar disorder report onset during childhood. The estimated prevalence of bipolar disorder among children and adolescents aged 9 to 17 years is 1.2%. Because schizophrenia and bipolar disorder often manifest early in life and have been associated with poor outcomes, early recognition of these disorders and effective treatments for young patients are needed. The atypical antipsychotics offer important advantages over the typical antipsychotics. This study included male and female patients who had a DSM-IV diagnosis of either bipolar I disorder or schizophrenia. Unlike many other branches of medicine, the field of psychiatry in general lacks laboratory or other biologic measures that can be used to asses the presence or severity of illness. To more objectively define various types of mental illness and to standardize assessment of these disorders, mental health practitioners have developed a wide array of rating scales for psychiatric illness that can utilize in a variety of settings. A group of rating scales may be selected that identifying how change in a novel drug therapy affects an individual's level of functioning and satisfaction with treatment. Careful selection and appropriate use of rating scales in a given situation will assist in obtaining information of patient outcomes that is accurate and useful for future care planning. In this study, the assessments of Caregiver Strain Questionnaire (CGSQ) were performed at each visit during the treatment. GSQ is a caregiver report to assess the extent to which caregivers are affected by the caring for a child with emotional and behavioral challenges. Caregiver strain is closely related to child functioning. CGSQ the caregiver responded to would be a direct result of the child's emotional/behavioral problems. The intensity of strain from CGSQ should be a consistent predictor for the treatment outcome when the child is under medical therapy. CGSQ, defined as a set of attributes and criteria for the assessment of caregiver status and quality of life, contains 21 items that assess strain experienced by caregivers.

Topic: Family Caregiving in Mental Illness
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences