Background: Heart failure (HF) is a major and growing public health problem worldwide. Across the world, heart failure is associated with high mortality, high hospitalization rates, and poor quality of life. Self-care is defined as a naturalistic decision-making process involving the choice of behaviors that maintain physiologic stability, the response to symptoms when they occur, and the ability to follow the treatment regimen and control symptoms. One instrument used to measure self-care is the Self Care of Heart Failure Index.
Aim: The purpose of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Self Care of Heart Failure Index v.6.2 (SCHFI v.6.2).
Methodology: Before testing its psychometric properties, the SCHFI v.6.2 was translated and adapted from its original English version into Spanish. Subsequently, we tested the instrument's psychometric properties on a sample of 203 participants with HF. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the sociodemographic and clinical variables, and to describe item responses. We tested the factorial validity of the SCHFI v.6.2 using confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis.
Results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using the our pre-existing models which resulted with poor fit indices. Thus, we performed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on each of the SCHFI v.6.2 scales.
Conclusion: The Spanish version of the SCHFI v.6.2. has good characteristics of factorial validity and can be used in clinical practice and research to measure self-care in patients with HF.
Keywords: heart failure; psychometrics; self-care.