| dc.description.abstract | A growth mindset is defined as the belief that one’s basic traits and abilities can
be improved upon through continuing effort and learning. In contrast, a fixed mindset is
the belief that one’s qualities are inborn and unchangeable, which creates a motivation to
avoid negative feedback and respond negatively to failure (Dweck, 2006). The mindset
that a caregiver of a family member with dementia holds can influence how they
approach caregiving duties for persons in their care.
The aim of the current study was to develop a caregiver mindset scale designed to
assess the growth and fixed mindsets of people engaged in informal family caregiving of
a person with dementia. A concept analysis and literature review was conducted with the
goal of developing a scale that measures the mindsets of informal caregivers. Data from
355 family caregivers who were taking care of their family member with dementia at
home were collected on Amazon Mechanical Turk. An exploratory factor analysis was
performed to uncover the underlying factor structure in the data, and more specifically, to
test for the presence of a caregiver growth mindset and a caregiver fixed mindset. The
final DCM Scale contained 33 items, which measured a variety of caregiving beliefs
regarding growth mindset domains of content, dementia caregiver specific growth skills,
and caregiver relationship skills that were organized into two factors.
The caregiver growth mindset factor consisted of 22 items (α = 0.90) and the
caregiver fixed mindset factor consisted of 11 items (α = 0.88), demonstrating excellent
internal consistency. Future research should aim to test further the psychometric
properties of this dementia caregiver mindset scale. | en_US |
