Validity and Reliability of the Turkish version of the Affiliated Stigma Scale for Caregivers of Dementia

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OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to adapt the "Affiliated Stigma Scale" to Turkish for caregivers of people with dementia and determine its psychometric properties. The scale measures the affiliated stigma experienced by caregivers of people with dementia. METHOD: We assessed the psychometric properties of Affiliated Stigma Scale in 218 adults who were primary caregivers for their relatives with dementia. Sociodemographic data was collected and the Affiliated Stigma Scale, the Caregiver Burden Inventory, and the Beck Depression Inventory were administered. RESULTS: The Confirmatory Factor Analysis results did not support the three-factor structure of the original scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed. EFA, revealed that the Turkish form of the Affiliated Stigma Scale has a four-factor structure as "other related/ cognition", "emotion", "self-related", and "behavior" with a total of 20 items. The variance explained by four factors constitutes 65.34% of the total variance. It was positively correlated with depression and caregiver burden scores. The internal consistency coefficients of the scale range was between 0.82 and 0.86 and was 0.91 for the total scale. CONCLUSION: The Affiliated Stigma Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool in Turkey for the caregivers of people with dementia in assessing affiliated stigma.