Scale of Assessment of Self-Care Behaviors with Arteriovenous Fistula in Hemodialysis: A Psychometric Study in Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Brazilian Scale for the Assessment of Self-Care Behaviors with Arteriovenous Fistula in Hemodialysis. Cross-sectional validation study, followed the recommendation provided by Sousa and Rojjanasrirat. Content validity, explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses used to check validity and Cronbach's alpha was the reliability measure. Three hundred hemodialysis patients with arteriovenous fistula were included in the study. The expert committee assessed the content validity. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed the same two-factor structure found for the original scale, explaining 60.10% of the variance. Such solution was checked by confirmatory factor analysis with Cronbach's alpha equal to 0.920, 0.810, and 0.884 for the overall scale, the self-care in management of signs and symptoms and the self-care in prevention of complications subscales respectively. The scale has good psychometric properties to assess self-care behaviors and can be used with Brazilian patients on hemodialysis with arteriovenous fistula.

Keywords: arteriovenous fistula; hemodialysis; reliability; self-care behaviors; validity.