The consequences of stroke extend beyond the individual who has sustained the stroke to include family members, the main providers of care to community dwelling stroke survivors. Caregiver research, for the most part, has focused on burden and distress. Although there is a growing consensus among health care researchers concerning the relevance of quality of life (QoL) as an outcome, there is little research examining QoL among family caregivers and even less focused on conceptualization of the construct. This thesis was designed to address these gaps in theory and measurement through a series of related studies. / The development of a conceptual model of QoL for family caregivers, that includes the caregiving situation, caregiver characteristics, and environmental factors, and their proposed relationships with QoL, provided a framework for the measurement and study of QoL. Relationships between patient characteristics, caregiver burden, and health-related quality of life (HRQL) were examined over the first two years of caregiving and the results confirmed the impact of the caregiving role on the caregiver's emotional health, and additionally, supported the need for a specific measure of overall QoL to more fully capture the caregiving experience. / A subsequent study was conducted to develop this measure of QoL for family caregivers of stroke survivors. Data from several different samples of family caregivers contributed to the specific phases required in measure development and psychometric testing. Four sub-scales, 'health', 'resources', 'role mastery', and 'rewards', were constructed. Although the overall psychometric properties of this measure are promising, they also indicate the need for further development of selected items and the 'rewards' subscale measuring the positive dimension. / The specific hypotheses concerning the relationships among the variables in the conceptual framework of QoL of family caregivers were tested using structural equation modeling and they were partially supported. The results suggest several approaches for intervening with family caregivers. As restructuring of health care delivery is placing more responsibility for the care of disabled members on the family, we require effective interventions to ensure that we preserve this valuable commodity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.84449 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | White, Carole |
| Contributors | Wood-Dauphinee, Sharon (advisor), Mayo, Nancy (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001973886, proquestno: AAINQ88602, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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