The Zarit Burden Interview: A new short version and screening version

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to develop a short and a screening ve rsion of the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) that would be suitable across dia gnostic groups of cognitively impaired older adults, and that could be used for cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intervention studies. Design and Me thods: We used data from 413 caregivers of cognitively impaired older adult s referred to a memory clinic. We collected information on caregiver burden with the 22-item ZBI, and information about dependence in activities of da ily living (ADLs) and the frequency of problem behaviors among care recipie nts. We used factor analysis and item-total correlations to reduce the numb er of items while taking into consideration diagnosis and change scores. Re sults: We produced a 12-item version (short) and a 4-item version (screenin g) of the ZBI. Correlations between the short and the full version ranged f rom 0.92 to 0.97, and from 0.83 to 0.93 for the screening version. Correlat ions between the three versions and ADL and problem behaviors were similar. We further investigated the behavior of the short version with a two-way a nalysis of variance and found that it produced identical results to the ful l version. Implications: The short and screening versions of the ZBI produc ed results comparable to those of the Ml version. Reducing the number of it ems did not affect the properties of the ZBI, and it may lead to easier adm inistration of the instrument.