Turkish Version of Caregiver Difficulties Scale: a Study of Reliability and Validity

As the life expectancy of individuals with Cerebral Palsy(CP) increases, their families' material, spiritual, physical and social difficulties increase, and in time, psychological and behavioral barriers occur in family members. While these barriers are increasing in developing countries, the whole family may be more vulnerable to the negative consequences of caring because of the limited availability of basic facilities for disabled people and the lack of temporary care services. The main aim of rehabilitation of individuals with CP is to improve their adaptive functions by increasing their postural control, locomotion and manipulative skills. Today, family-centered approaches for CP are known to be the most successful in terms of rehabilitation. Because the family is known to be of great importance in terms of active participation of the child in life. Therefore, while interdisciplinary treatments are in progress for the treatment of individuals, the success of rehabilitation is provided by interacting with the family, identifying their needs and problems and supporting them. There are many questionnaires developed to assess the difficulties experienced by the parents of individuals with CP. Of these, surveys adapted to Turkish are less common. The direct translation of the questionnaires into other languages does not guarantee its validity. If measures are to be used across cultures, it is known that the elements should not only be well translated linguistically, but also culturally adapted to maintain the content validity of the instrument across different cultures.