Translation and validation of the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory

Objective (s): This study was performed to translate and validatie the Persian version of Critical Care Family Needs Inventory (CCFNI) assessing family needs of admitted patients in the intensive care units and to determine its validation. After translation qualitative face validity and content validity was established for the questionnaire. In order to evaluate the construct validity, known-groups comparison (nonsurgical versus surgical patients) was performed and to determine its differential validity, intensive care unit were compared with the conventional wards using independent-sample t -test. The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha coefficients) were used to assess the scale reliability. 150 family members of patients in intensive care units and 150 patient's family members in general medical and surgical wards participated in this study. Significant differences were found between surgical and nonsurgical patient's family (p=0.03) as well as the intensive care unit and conventional wards (p=0.007). There were significant positive correlations between all scale dimensions (0.684≤r≤0.439, p<0.001). Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.926 while it was more than 0.7 in three dimensions (support, comfort and closeness). It was between 0.6 to 0.7 in the two other dimensions (information and confidence). The findings confirmed that the Iranian version of Critical Care Family Need Inventory is a valid measure for assessing family needs of patients admitted to intensive care units