title: Development of the caregivers attitude scale on home care of schizophrenics (CASHS).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that elicits feelings of strangeness and discomfort, which may create stigma and lead to the social exclusion of the mentally ill and of the people relating with them. In the past decade, there has been an increase in the number of research studies on attitudes toward mental disorders.
  
  
  METHODS
  An instrument was developed to assess the attitude of primary caregivers on home care of schizophrenics. This article describes the development of a Likert scale, the Caregivers Attitude Scale on Home Care of Schizophrenics CASHS, which is a 31-item self-reported instrument that quantifies three aspects of home care, that is, attitude towards patient, towards treatment, and towards social interaction. The steps involved in its development are the review of literature, development of items, content validation, translation and language validity, pretesting, and reliability.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After establishing the content validity, the CASHS was pretested with five subjects. To establish the reliability of the CASHS, 21 primary caregivers were recruited through purposive sampling technique. In order to measure the stability between scores obtained, a test-retest reliability was computed using Karl Pearson correlation coefficient and the r value was 0.78. The internal consistency was measured using Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlation and the r value was 0.789. The item discrimination analysis was also computed and the value was of above 0.35. These statistical measurements indicate that the CASHS was reliable.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The CASHS is a valid and reliable tool that can be utilized for assessing the attitude of primary caregivers on home care of schizophrenics.
authors.affiliation: PhD Scholar, Yenepoya University, Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Balasubramanian
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Jagadguru Sri Shivarathreeshwara Medical College and Hospital, Jagadguru Sri Shivarathreeshwara University, Mysore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: T S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Sathyanarayana Rao
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health Nursing, College of Nursing, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Juliana Linnette
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: D'Sa
keywords: Attitude scale; home care; item analysis; primary caregivers; schizophrenia