Informal caregivers provide a substantial amount of emotional, financial, physical, and social support to their loved ones with Alzheimers disease. Alzheimers caregivers often report immense levels of burden, which are associated with the demands of their caregiving duties. Caregivers mediate this burden through various means of coping, including spiritual support. Individuals who successfully manage the negative stressors related to Alzheimers caregiving are often highly resilient. The purpose of this study was to re-evaluate the psychometric properties of the Spiritual Support Scale among a sample of Alzheimers caregivers. The Spiritual Support Scale was initially utilized to measure spiritual coping among a sample of graduate and undergraduate students, after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The current study examined the efficacy of the Spiritual Support Scale among a sample of 691 Alzheimers caregivers in south Louisiana. The study confirmed previously reported calculations of the scales reliability by calculating Cronbachs alpha and Guttmans split-half coefficient. The study also established the validity of the Spiritual Support Scale by comparing the measure to theoretically linked constructs, coping and resilience. Confirmatory factor analysis identified a single factor of the Spiritual Support Scale on which all items of the scale loaded. The study concluded the Spiritual Support Scale has sound psychometric properties.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04062012-122029 |
| Date | 25 April 2012 |
| Creators | Bowman, Angela M. |
| Contributors | Lim, Younghee, Barthelemy, Juan, Wilks, Scott |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04062012-122029/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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