Mortenson W Ben, Demers Louise, Fuhrer Marcus J, Jutai Jeffrey W, Lenker James, DeRuyter Frank
Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of British Columbia, Canada.
J Rehabil Med. 2015 May;47(5):412-8. doi: 10.2340/16501977-1952.
Assistive technology is often recommended with the aim of increasing user independence and reducing the burden on informal caregivers. However, until now, there has been no tool to measure the outcomes of this process for caregivers.
To describe the development of the Caregiver Assistive Technology Outcome Measure (CATOM), a tool developed to measure the impact of assistive technology interventions on the burden experienced by informal caregivers, and to undertake preliminary evaluation of its psychometric properties.
Based on an existing conceptual framework, existing measures were reviewed to identify potential items in a preliminary version of the measure. Cognitive interviewing was used to identify items needing clarification. A revised CATOM and manual were then reviewed by clinicians. After revising some items based on the interview findings, the measure was piloted as part of an intervention study examining the impact of assistive technology on the users' informal caregivers (n = 44).
Based on a review of 12 existing measures, a 3-part measure was developed and questions were refined based on cognitive interviews with informal caregivers and feedback experienced assistive technology practitioners. For the activity-specific and overall portions of the measure, the 6-week, test-retest intraclass correlations coefficients were 0.88 (95% CI 0.64-0.96) and 0.86 (95% CI 0.60-0.95), respectively. The CATOM data correlated as hypothesized with other measures.
The CATOM is a promising measure with good content validity and encouraging psychometric properties.
辅助技术通常被推荐用于提高用户的独立性并减轻非正式照护者的负担。然而，到目前为止，还没有工具来衡量这一过程对照护者的结果。
描述照护者辅助技术结果测量工具（CATOM）的开发过程，该工具旨在测量辅助技术干预对非正式照护者所承受负担的影响，并对其心理测量特性进行初步评估。
基于现有的概念框架，对照现有测量方法以确定该测量方法初步版本中的潜在项目。采用认知访谈来确定需要澄清的项目。然后由临床医生对照修订后的CATOM及手册进行评审。根据访谈结果对部分项目进行修订后，该测量方法作为一项干预研究的一部分进行了试点，该研究考察了辅助技术对用户非正式照护者的影响（n = 44）。
在对12种现有测量方法进行评审的基础上，开发了一个由三部分组成的测量方法，并根据对非正式照护者的认知访谈以及经验丰富的辅助技术从业者的反馈对问题进行了完善。对于该测量方法中特定活动部分和总体部分，6周的重测组内相关系数分别为0.88（95%CI 0.64 - 0.96）和0.86（95%CI 0.60 - 0.95）。CATOM数据与其他测量方法的相关性符合假设。
CATOM是一个很有前景的测量工具，具有良好的内容效度和令人鼓舞的心理测量特性。
