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The daily practice in home help services in the Netherlands: instrument development
Author(s) -
Arts Suzanne,
Kersten Hans,
Kerkstra Ada
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
health and social care in the community
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.984
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1365-2524
pISSN - 0966-0410
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2524.1996.tb00074.x
Subject(s) - workload , content validity , reliability (semiconductor) , professionalization , activities of daily living , validity , psychology , applied psychology , computer science , psychometrics , clinical psychology , psychiatry , power (physics) , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , law , operating system
Many developments have taken place in home help services which have made further professionalization necessary. For this reason, a national study has been planned in the Netherlands to obtain a representative picture of the work of home helps and to examine overloading aspects of their workload. Five instruments were developed for this purpose and a pilot study was carried out to establish the reliability and content validity of the main instrument: a registration form to record the activities that home helps perform. Twenty‐five home helps participated in the pilot study. An observer monitored them during their home visits for a period of 1 week. Both the observer and the home help recorded the activities that were carried out independently on the registration form. The reliability of the registration form was assessed by inter‐rater‐reliability. The validity of this instrument was estimated by the content validity. The results show that the registration form is, in general, a reliable instrument. There is a high level of agreement between home helps and observers in the four main categories: 94% for the household and the caring activities, 98% for the psycho‐social or supporting activities and 96% for the reporting activities. The content validity of the form is adequate and only a few items will be added to the final version of the form.