Developing a social capital scale for family caregivers of people with dementia

• There is a lack of social capital scale specialized for family caregivers of people with dementia. • We developed the new social capital scale for family caregivers of people with dementia. • The 17-scale was assessed for model fit, dimensionality, reliability and validity. • This social capital scale had sufficient reliability and evidence of validity.

Although several scales have been designed to measure social capital, none have been specialized for caregivers of people with dementia, even though social capital is important in terms of continuing care provision. Therefore, we developed and validated a 17-item measure to assess social capital among caregivers of people with dementia. We assessed psychometric properties using responses from a questionnaire survey that included a draft of a social capital scale. Factor analysis identified three factors involving 17 items with a Cronbach's alpha of.85. The intra-class coefficient for test–retest reliability was.71. The correlation with positive aspects of caregiving was.62 (p <.01). The results suggest that our scale could be a useful tool to assess social capital among caregivers of people with dementia.