Assessing Coping, Caregiving Efficacy, and Relational Support in Caregivers of Individuals with Cancer : A Cluster Analytic Study

Abstract

Psychosocial research has focused on understanding the experiences of people with cancer but limited research has addressed the biopsychosocial variables affecting caregivers of individuals with cancer. We are in the early stages of developing a research project to analyze the experiences of cancer caregivers. Through our presentation at DUCURS, we will solicit feedback to assess the face validity of our questionnaire. We are preparing to pilot this initial measure after DUCURS and have compiled the proposed measures based on previously validated measures that have been used extensively in other studies. We will present our work on evaluating the psychometric qualities of the existing measures as well as our own unique questionnaire development methods. We will also present our hypotheses and research questions. Additionally, we will discuss the statistical methodology of cluster analysis and how we expect to use it to analyze our final data. Cluster analysis is a statistical technique used to categorize participants into clusters based on their similarity on variables of interest. Using cluster analysis, we aim to establish profiles for the caretakers of cancer patients to better understand the mental health needs and unique psychosocial experiences of caregivers of people with cancer. We have explored variables such as depression, anxiety, coping assessment, caregiving efficiency, and relational support for inclusion in our cluster analysis. In our presentation we will also discuss the usefulness of cluster analysis for applied psychological research.