RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Development and psychometric testing of a measure of informal caregiving for hospitalized older adults Nurit Gur-Yaish, Anna Zisberg, Gary Sinoff & Efrat Shadmi Accepted for publication 3 September 2011 Correspondence to N. Gur-Yaish: e-mail: ngur@univ.haifa.ac.il Nurit Gur-Yaish PhD Researcher Center for Research and Study of Aging, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel Anna Zisberg PhD RN Assistant Professor The Cheryl Spencer Department of Nursing, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel Gary Sinoff MD PhD Lecturer Department of Gerontology, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel Efrat Shadmi PhD RN Assistant Professor The Cheryl Spencer Department of Nursing, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel GUR-YAISH N., ZISBERG A., SINOFF G. & SHADMI E. (2011) GUR-YAISH N., ZISBERG A., SINOFF G. & SHADMI E. (2011) Development and psychometric testing of a measure of informal caregiving for hospitalized older adults. Journal of Advanced Nursing 00(0), 000–000. doi: 10.1111/j.1365- 2648.2011.05846.x Abstract Aim. This paper is a report of the development and psychometric testing of the questionnaire evaluating informal caregiving for hospitalized older adults. Background. Informal caregiving of hospitalized older adults is an understudied phenomenon that lacks a valid and reliable measure to capture its multi-dimensionality. Methods. An instrument development procedure, followed by an empirical study, was conducted from February to November 2009. Instrument development included item generation and content validity, which was established by five experts. The validation study utilized a retrospective between-patients design. The sample consisted of 279 patients, aged 70 and older, who were hospitalized in a large medical centre in northern Israel. The internal consistency reliability, construct, convergent and divergent validity of the measure were tested. Results. The 14-item scale describes various aspects of informal caregiving for older adults in the hospital setting. The scale has four dimensions: Instrumental care, Supervision of care, Psychological support and Ensuring and Explaining care. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the theoretical model of the four dimensions of care. Reliability analysis revealed acceptable-to-high estimates for the total and for the dimensional scores (ranging from 0Æ78 to 0Æ89). The convergent and divergent validity coefficients were all in the expected direction. Conclusions. The preliminary psychometric properties of the measure showed acceptable results. The measure should be further explored in different cultural settings and for its ability to link between caregiving attributes, as captured by the measure, and hospitalization outcomes in older adults. Keywords: assistance, hospital, informal caregiving, instrument development, older adults, support Introduction Social support was recognized by attachment theory as a major protective factor against adverse outcomes for older adults (Bowlby 1988). Caregiving for older adults in com- munity settings was defined as help with household chores, finances, outside services and visits (National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, 2004), aspects usually delivered by Ó 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 JAN JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING