Development and validation of the Family Meaning of Nursing-Home Visits Scale

Aims and objectives. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a Family Meaning of Nursing‐Home Visits Scale that can be used to assess and document family members’ rationale for visiting nursing home residents. Background. Understanding the meaning ascribed by families for visiting nursing home residents is necessary to develop intervention programmes that facilitate the quality of families’ nursing home visits. No valid and reliable instrument is available in Taiwan or elsewhere to accurately document the meaning of family visits to nursing home residents. Design. A cross‐sectional design was used to collect survey data from family members of nursing home residents as the quantitative component of a mixed‐methods study. Items were developed based on qualitative data from our previous research and that of others. This initial pool of items was used to develop and validate the scale. Methods. The validity of the scale was confirmed by exploratory factor analysis and criterion‐related validity testing. Internal consistency reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alphas. Results. Factor analysis yielded a six‐factor final solution (32 items), accounting for 66·76% of the variance. For criterion‐related validity, ‘responsibility for care quality’ was negatively correlated with satisfaction with nursing home caregiving (r = −0·23, p