UNCOVERING THE CULTURAL-CONTEXT FOR QUALITY OF FAMILY CAREGIVING FOR ELDERS

This article is part of a symposium exploring issues in developing cro ss-culturally equivalent conceptualizations and measures for a study o f elder family caregiving. This article describes the development of a n instrument to measure quality of elder family caregiving among Angle and Mexican American caregivers. Following a review of typical approa ches for evaluating quality of caregiving, a cross-cultural standard f or excellence in elder caregiving is described. An instrument consiste nt with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the QUALCARE Scale is identified as an appropriate cross-cultural instrume nt for assessing the quality of elder family caregiving. Refinement of the QUALCARE Scale using Berry's model for cross-cultural research, w hich necessitated identification of appropriate cross-cultural indicat ors of quality, is described Examples of this process of indicator cla rification are given for several basic human rights, based on the cros s-cultural research team members' experiences with Angle and Mexican A merican caregivers.