Abstract: Objective: To develop and evaluate the reliability and validity of Home Medication Safety Assessment Scale of Children's Caregivers. Methods: Based on the health belief model, the initial scale was firstly developed through literature review and qualitative interview of children's caregivers. The final scale was formed by expert consultation and pre-investigation. From March to April 2022, a total of 250 cases of children caregivers were selected by convenience sampling for item analysis and factor analysis. From May to July 2022, totally 402 children caregivers were selected for questionnaire survey to further analyze the reliability and validity of the scale. Results: There were 34 items in the formal scale, with 7 dimensions including perceived threat, perceived benefits, perceived obstacles, self-efficacy, safe medication behavior, potentially risky medication behavior and unsafe medication behavior. Seven common factors were extracted from exploratory factor analysis, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 69.066%. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model fit was good and the scale factor structure was stable. The content validity index of each item was 0.838-1.000; the content validity index of the average scale level was 0.940; the Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.848; the split-half reliability was 0.776; and the test-retest reliability was 0.880. Conclusion: The home medication safety assessment scale of children's caregivers developed in this study has a good reliability and validity, which can be used as a scientific tool to evaluate the home medication safety of children caregivers, and provide guidance for the development of home medication safety improvement programs for children caregivers.

Key words: children; caregivers; home; medication safety; risk; scale; reliability; validity