THE RELATIONSHIP OF COMMITMENT AND SOCIAL SUPPORT TO THE LIFE SATISFACTION OF CAREGIVERS TO PATIENTS WITH ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE.
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 163
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.; Social Work.
Description: The purpose of this study was to adapt a measure of commitment and a measure of social support for use within the caregiving context in order to measure the degree of commitment and the degree of social support of the caregiver to the task of giving care to the patient with Alzheimer's disease. In addition, the study explored the relationships between commitment, social support, life satisfaction, and other variables related to the caregiving situation. The conceptual framework was based on The Lines of Defense of the Caregiver Model which was developed from The Neuman Systems Model (Neuman, 1982).

A non-experimental, correlational design was used for this study. Data from 64 caregivers to patients with Alzheimer's disease who were currently providing care were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's product-moment correlations, and hierarchical regression techniques as outlined in SPSS$\sp\□rm x □$System (Norusis, 1987; Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989).

The sample were members of an Alzheimer's disease family support group. The average caregiver was a 64.8 year old married female who had been providing care for 4.3 years to a 75.8 year old married female patient who had Alzheimer's disease for 5.7 years. Pearson's correlation coefficients indicated that social support was significantly related to life satisfaction and to commitment. Low levels of life satisfaction and low levels of social support were related to increased years in the caregiving role. The variables of social support, role stress, commitment, years of caregiving, and the number of medical diagnoses were combined into 3 sets of variables in order to perform a hierarchical regression. Although social support failed to perform as anticipated in the hierarchical regression to predict life satisfaction, other variables such as commitment to the caregiving role, years of caregiving, the number of medical diagnoses, and involvement in other roles, were important predictors of levels of life satisfaction for the caregiver.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-04, Section: B, page: 1747.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1989.

School code: 0227.