Desejabilidade Social e Precisão do Inventário de Habilidades Sociais para Cuidadores de Idosos (IHS-CI).

The Social Skills Inventory for Caregivers of the Elderly People (SSI-CE) was developed to assess the interpersonal repertoire of family caregivers. The instrument presents evidence of internal and external validity. However, the existence of a social desirability bias is questioned. The aim of this study was to verify the evidence of discriminative validity in relation to the social desirability and the reliability of the IHS-CI. The sample comprised 252 caregivers of elderly people, mean age of 50 years-old (SD = 14.4), who answered the following instruments: Sociodemographic Questionnaire; Brazil Criteria; IHS-CI; and Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Social skills did not correlate with social desirability, which indicates that the IHS-CI presents evidence of discriminative validity. The precision values found were: Affective Expressiveness (ω=.85); Assertive Communication (ω=.77); Training/Information Search (ω=.68) and General Score (ω=.90). The IHS-CI is adequate for use and has strong evidence of validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]