A variety of interventions are available to supportthe caregivers of dementia patients. For the purpose of service planning, we developed aninstrument to assess the needs of dementia caregivers and whether these needsare met. Another aim was to investigate aspects of reliability and validity ofthis new instrument.

Thedevelopment of this instrument ('Carers’ Needs Assessment for Dementia” =CNA-D) wasbased on in-depth interviews and a focus group. The combined inter-rater and test-retest reliabilitywas investigated among 45 dementia caregivers. For analyzing concurrent validity correlations of the CNA-D with the ”ZaritBurden Inventory' were used. Content validity wasinvestigated by performing a separate survey among 40 caregivers and 40 professionals.

The CNA-D is asemi-structured research interview including 18 problem areas. For each ofthese problem areas, the CNA-D offers several possible interventions. Therelevance of the problem areas and the interventions (contentvalidity) wasconfirmed by the majority of the study participants. Significant positiveassociations were found between the total score of the 'Zarit Burden Inventory'on the one hand, and the number of problems and the number of unmet needsaccording to the CNA-D on the other hand. The agreement between the interviewerswas 'excellent” (i.e. kappa above 0.75) in 73.7% of the problem areas and in69.9% of the interventions.

These results suggest that the CNA-D is both validand reliable. The CNA-D seems to be able to comprehensively assess the needs ofdementia caregivers