Developing and Validating of the Family Coping Scale for Patients with Chronic Heart Failure

Background: : Family coping, as an essential part of family management of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF), is an important component of CHF interventions, affecting the health of patients, family members, and the whole family. It is necessary to understand the current situation of family coping in patients with CHF to facilitate the development of family interventions for patients with CHF. This study aims to develop and validate a tool for assessing the family coping scale for patients with CHF.
Methods: The semi-structured interviews, expert consensus meetings, expert consultations, and item analysis were used to develop the initial scale. We employed classical test theory and exploratory factor analysis to scrutinize and refine the items in the scale. To validate the scale, we used confirmatory factor analysis to assess structural validity. We assessed internal consistency, and split-half reliability to ensure the scale’s robustness and accuracy.
Results: The FCS-CHF consisted of 24 items, including six dimensions: strategies for better management of CHF, psychological coping, substantial support by family members, emergency coping, overall heart failure awareness, and patients’ health behavior. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale fitted the data with well construct validity. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis for the overall goodness of fit indices for the fitted model were found to be acceptable for the scale. The scale demonstrates good reliability and validity, meeting the requirements of psychometrics.
Conclusions: The FCS-CHF developed in this study is considered reliable and valid, which can measure family coping in patients with CHF and provide a basis for developing family coping enhancement strategies.