Exploring correlates of quality of life in older family caregivers to cancer patients.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
186 Background: Family caregivers (FCs) have negative impacts to their physical and emotional health, and poorer quality of life (QoL) compared to non-caregivers. Most research on FCs has included heterogeneous samples, therefore little is known about specific groups such as older (age 60+) FCs. Older persons are at increased risk for health problems, may have co-morbidities, and be socially isolated. Understanding factors related to QoL may lead to interventions targeted to older FCs. The purpose of this study was to examine factors associated with QoL in older FCs to cancer patients. Methods: The data for this study are from a larger survey of FCs aged 60+, recruited from a hospital-based cancer facility. FCs were included if their care recipient had breast, prostate or colorectal cancer. QoL was measured using the MOSF-36. Analyses using descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlations were conducted. Results: n = 168 participants consented, with n = 129 surveys returned. The majority of participants were female (60.5 %), 70 yrs old (sd 7.4), had at least a college diploma (65.2 %), were spouses of the patient 92.2%, and retired (60.5%). Mean caregiving hours per week was 24.2 (sd 26.3). Mean time as a caregiver was 31 months (45.9). The majority of patients were on treatment (75.2%) and were 71.3 yrs old (sd 7.5). The Physical Component Summary (PCS) of the MOSF-36 was significantly correlated with gender r = -.24, social support r = .25, sleep quality r = -.47, depression r = -.51, state anxiety r = -.40, and trait anxiety r = -.45 (all p’s < .01). There were significant correlations between the Mental Component Summary (MCS) and social support r = .40, sleep quality r = -.40, depression r = -.77, gender r = -.25, state anxiety r = -.72, and trait anxiety r = -.71 (all p’s < .01). The MCS was correlated with caregiving hours, r = -.197 (p < .05), however, not with patient treatment status. The PCS was not correlated with caregiving hours or patient treatment status. Conclusions: Consistent with previous FC research across different diseases, QoL was associated with gender, caregiving hours per week, social support, sleep quality, depression, and anxiety. Interventions for older FCs of cancer patients could be targeted to specific factors of overall QoL.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".