Tool development: a community needs assessment for hospice home care in Taiwan

The purposes of this descriptive exploratory study were to develop a community needs assessment tool for hospice home care in Taiwan and to evaluate the reliability and validity of the tool. The Community Needs Assessment Tool (CNAT), a 59-item self-report survey with a 7-point Likert scale format, was designed to measure the importance of needs and the likelihood of using home-based hospice services. Two hundred and twenty-one subjects were conveniently recruited to test the reliability and validity of the CNAT. The overall reliability of the CNAT was demonstrated by Cronbach's alpha = 0.95. The internal consistency of the subscales ranged from 0.76 to 0.87 which were very acceptable. Convergent validity was suggested through a positive strong relationship among all subscales (Pearson r of 0.315-0.622). Additionally, the CNAT was able to discriminate the difference between two different age groups. The CNAT is a valid instrument.