| dc.description.abstract | Background
Parents of infants, admitted to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), experience stress and feelings of helplessness. Involving parents in daily care helps them taking their parental role. This process of informing parents, learning to care and involvement in decision making is described as family empowerment. The Dutch translation of the Family Empowerment Scale (FES), might be an instrument to measure parents ability to gain knowledge, skills, their participation in care and shared decision making.
Aim
Evaluating content validity of the Dutch translation of the FES, in terms of relevance and comprehensiveness, in the NICU.
Method
This observational convergent mixed methods study quantitatively assessed relevance of items, using the Content Validity Index (CVI). Comprehensiveness was studied qualitatively using cognitive interviews. Results of both analyses were converged to determine content validity of the FES.
Results
Relevance of items scored .73 in total by CVI . Interviews showed problems with participants understanding the introduction, and their familiarity with the concept of empowerment. Furthermore, where problems and services were included in the items these were interpreted as medical. However when items were related to daily care, participants expressed the importance of involvement and decision making.
Conclusion
The FES showed weak content validity in terms of relevance on CVI, however interviews showed strong evidence when items would refer to daily care.
Recommendations
Based on our results, it is recommended to adjust the introduction to explain the concept of empowerment and the context within which participants should judge the items. Further studying the adjusted FES, to determine content validity, could provide nurses with a validated tool to measure empowerment in NICU parents. | |
