Further exploration of the Young Carers Perceived Stress Scale: identifying a benefit-finding dimension

Objectives: A substantial number of children are involved in informal caregiving and make a significant contribution to health care delivery. While this places high levels of demand on their coping resources, there is some evidence that these children find benefit in their caring role. The Young Carers Perceived Stress Scale (YCPSS) (Early et al., 2006, J. Child Fam. Stud., 15, 169) identified a positive dimension of caring, which appears to have potential in terms of measuring benefit finding in this group. The current study aimed to further explore YCPSS to clarify this dimension.

Design: A survey design using questionnaire data collection was used with a sample of 329 children between the ages of 12 and 16.

Methods: A pool of 52 items based on the YCPSS was administered along with measures of support, coping, and psychological distress to 329 young carers attending organized support groups.

Results: Factor analysis with maximum likelihood extraction identified six factors including one 8-item dimension labelled benefit finding, which had good internal reliability and produced a pattern of correlations with support, coping, and psychological distress indicating initial evidence of validity.

Conclusions: The study produced initial evidence for reliability and validity of an 8-item benefit-finding measure, as well as a clearer set of dimensions for the original YCPSS. The resulting measures should prove useful in further explorations of benefit finding and resilience in young carers.