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Although familism has been studied in both Mexican American and Anglo families, there is controversy about whether familism in both groups is the same. Research has shown great within-group variability, and in addition, the kinship structure in the two groups is fundamentally different. This article explores the cross-cultural issues in conceptualizing familism and its relevance to caregiving among Anglo and Mexican American caregivers. Based on data obtained in an ongoing research program, the process of arriving at similarities and differences in the expression of familism is discussed using Berry's criteria for achieving cultural equivalence.

This article is part of a symposium that explores the issues involved in developing cross-culturally equivalent conceptualizations and measures for studying family caregiving. The examples used are from the instrument development phase of an ongoing program of research designed to generate and test a theory that explains the quality of family caregiving for frail elders at home. This article provides the background for the symposium by introducing the symposium's unifying theme: cross-cultural equivalence. The process described is based on the experiences of the cross-cultural research team and Berry's model for developing cross-culturally equivalent research.

This article is part of a symposium describing the development of cross-culturally relevant instruments to measure familism, caregiver burden, and quality of elder caregiving among Anglo- and Mexican American caregivers. This article explores issues involved in measuring caregiving burden. Caregiving burden is thought to adversely affect family caregiving, but the influence of culture on perceptions of burden has not been explored. Because no research focuses on caregiving burden among Mexican American caregivers, the first step involved reviewing the literature for cultural factors influencing caregiving and using the expertise of the cross-cultural team to identify and compare the meaning of caregiving burden in both groups. Next, two instrumentation studies were done to analyze the items on Poulshock and Deimling's Burden Instrument for comparable meaning and internal consistency within and between groups. The third step involved assessing the validity of Poulshock and Deimling's conceptualization of burden cross-culturally.

This article is part of a symposium exploring issues in developing cross-culturally equivalent conceptualizations and measures for a study of elder family caregiving. This article describes the development of an instrument to measure quality of elder family caregiving among Anglo and Mexican American caregivers. Following a review of typical approaches for evaluating quality of caregiving, a cross-cultural standard for excellence in elder caregiving is described. An instrument consistent with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the QUALCARE Scale, is identified as an appropriate cross-cultural instrument for assessing the quality of elder family caregiving. Refinement of the QUALCARE Scale using Berry's model for cross-cultural research, which necessitated identification of appropriate cross-cultural indicators of quality, is described. Examples of this process of indicator clarification are given for several basic human rights, based on the cross-cultural research team members' experiences with Anglo and Mexican American caregivers.

As Hinshaw (1981) has noted, the process of designing research might best be conceptualized as a series of informed decisions that involve constant trade-offs and compromise. With each advantage gained by a particular theoretical or methodological decision, the researcher inherits a certain number of threats to the study's internal and external validity and a potential number of error sources. Because of the nature of the research questions of interest to nurses and because of situational and contextual constraints in the clinical setting, nurse researchers often are required to select samples that contain small or large proportions of elderly subjects. The purpose of this article has been to raise some of the theoretical and methodological issues associated with the selection of both age-heterogeneous samples and age-homogeneous samples. Although in research all possible error sources cannot be controlled, it is possible to reduce the amount of error by a clear understanding of the implications of choices regarding age-related issues and inclusion of design features that reduce the amount of error introduced when research subjects who are relatively young are studied along with research subjects who are elderly.