Aims. Caring for a person with dementia can be physically, mentally and financially burdensome. Holistic needs assessment is a practical approach that pinpoints the areas in which carers perceive they need assistance, allowing support to be targeted to the areas in which carers perceive they need it most. We aimed to develop a psychometrically valid instrument to assess the unmet needs of carers of people with dementia.
Methods. The Unmet Needs Instrument for Carers of People with Dementia (UNI-C) was developed using a rigorous and accepted process comprising literature reviews, interviews with carers, input from health and aged care professionals, cognitive interviewing and pilot testing. The resulting 80-item instrument was administered to 169 carers to examine its psychometric characteristics. Item reduction was first performed based on item prevalence, item-total and pairwise correlations, factor loadings and clinical relevance. Internal reliability, and structural and convergent validity were subsequently assessed for the reduced set of items.
Results. Following item reduction from 80 to 46 items, the resulting UNI-C46 instrument comprised four domains: ‘Your own wellbeing’ (16 items), ‘Finding information’ (12 items), ‘Managing practical needs’ (10 items), and ‘Managing dementia symptoms’ (8 items). The instrument showed acceptable structural and convergent validity, and good internal reliability (α =0.94) and acceptability.
Conclusions. This study introduces the UNI-C46 as a potentially useful clinical and research instrument. While acceptable reliability and validity were demonstrated, further testing of these properties with a larger and more representative sample of carers is warranted.