Validity and Reliability of the Turkish version of the Affiliated Stigma Scalefor Caregivers of Dementia.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to adapt the "Affiliated Stigma Scale" to Turkish for caregivers of people with dementia and determine its psychometric properties. The scale measures the affiliated stigma experienced by caregivers of people with dementia.

METHOD

We assessed the psychometric properties of Affiliated Stigma Scale in 218 adults who were primary caregivers for their relatives with dementia. Sociodemographic data was collected and the Affiliated Stigma Scale, the Caregiver Burden Inventory, and the Beck Depression Inventory were administered.

RESULTS

The Confirmatory Factor Analysis results did not support the three-factor structure of the original scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed. EFA, revealed that the Turkish form of the Affiliated Stigma Scale has a four-factor structure as "other related/ cognition", "emotion", "self-related", and "behavior" with a total of 20 items. The variance explained by four factors constitutes 65.34% of the total variance. It was positively correlated with depression and caregiver burden scores. The internal consistency coefficients of the scale range was between 0.82 and 0.86 and was 0.91 for the total scale.

CONCLUSION

The Affiliated Stigma Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool in Turkey for the caregivers of people with dementia in assessing affiliated stigma.