Psychometric Testing of the Sidani and Doran Therapeutic Self-Care Scale in a Home Health Care Population.

Background and Purpose: Self-care is a central goal of home health (HH) nursing care. The study purpose was to assess psychometric performance of the Therapeutic Self-Care Scale (TSCS) in a U.S. HH population. Methods: TSCS reliability was assessed with Cronbach's alpha and test-retest analyses (n = 59). Convergent validity testing and principal components analysis (PCA) were performed. Results: After elimination of 2 items, internal consistency reliability was acceptable (α = .804) and test-retest reliability was high (intraclass correlation = .94; p < .001). Convergent validity analyses were inconclusive. PCA found 2 underlying dimensions consistent with a conceptual difference between self-care and self-management. Conclusions: A valid, reliable measure of self-care/ management would be useful for measurement of HH nursing outcomes. The TSCS holds promise but needs further refinement before it can serve this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]