THE DAILY PRACTICE IN-HOME HELP SERVICES IN THE NETHERLANDS - INSTRUMENT DEVELOPMENT

Many developments have taken place in home help services which have ma de further professionalization necessary. For this reason, a national study has been planned in the Netherlands to obtain a representative p icture of the work of home helps and to examine overloading aspects of their workload. Five instruments were developed for this purpose and a pilot study was carried out to establish the reliability and content validity of the main instrument: a registration form to record the ac tivities that home helps perform. Twenty-five home helps participated in the pilot study. An observer monitored them during their home visit s for a period of 1 week. Both the observer and the home help recorded the activities that were carried out independently on the registratio n form. The reliability of the registration form was assessed by inter -rater-reliability. The validity of this instrument was estimated by t he content validity. The results show that the registration form is, i n general, a reliable instrument. There is a high level of agreement b etween home helps and observers in the four main categories: 94% for t he household and the caring activities, 98% for the psyche-social or s upporting activities and 96% for the reporting - activities. The conte nt validity of the form is adequate and only a few items will be added to the final version of the form.