Family carer burden will be measured by the Uplift/Burden Scale [ 41], a 23-item scale that has six uplift and 17 burden items.
To measure caregiving burden, items from the sections of the questionnaire pertaining to aspects of caregiving including health, health insurance and income, and social participation were used.
CFA was used to confirm the factor structure of the 57 DSQOLS burden items using the total sample from the database study.
The hierarchical order of the burden items was tested with the Mokken scale analysis (H-value 0.47) and the scale was moderately homogeneous (Molenaar and Sijtsma 2000).
It includes 44 burden items measuring the impact of diabetes on "social relations," "leisure time flexibility," "diet restrictions," "physical complaints," "daily hassles," and "worries about the future".
Thus, this revised version of the DSQOLS includes a total of 77 items, comprising 10 individual treatment goal items, 10 treatment-satisfaction items, and 57 diabetes-specific burden items.
Caregiver respondents reported medium to high levels of burden, with the most frequent burden items including fear of the future for their loved one, stress related to being a caregiver with other personal responsibilities, social life interference, and uncertainty.
All burden items were scored on a five-point rating scale ranging from not embarrassing, painful or burdensome to extremely embarrassing, painful or burdensome (1=not at all; 2=slightly; 3= somewhat; 4=rather; and 5=extremely).
SF-8: Health related quality of life scale, Short Form-8 CES-D: Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale ZBI: Zarit Burden Interview Income: 1 million yen is approximately equivalent to US$8,600 Care burden items were selected according to the procedures described in Methods.
The EBQ burden items such as embarrassment, pain and burden during the procedure were scored on five-point rating scales labelled as not embarrassing, painful or burdensome, to extremely embarrassing, painful or burdensome (1=not at all; 2=slightly; 3= somewhat; 4=rather; and 5=extremely).
