Does the relationship between stress and quality of life differ among informal caregivers of older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and children with autism spectrum disorder? Results from a cross-sectional survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Informal caregiving may impact the physical, mental and economic well-being and ultimately the quality of life (QOL) of the caregivers, however, each caregiver may differ in the degree to which their QOL is impacted. Little is known about association of stressors and coping mechanism in subjective variation of QOL among informal caregivers. This study aimed to understand the appraisal process for QOL among informal caregivers and compare informal caregivers of older adults and children with respect to their appraisal of QOL. METHODOLOGY: This cross-sectional study utilized a web-based survey to gather data from two distinct groups of informal caregivers: those caring for older adults with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and those caring for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Caregivers at least 18 years of age were administered a survey that included previously-developed scales to measure stress, coping mechanism, and QOL. Structural equation modeling was employed to assess the mediating role of coping behaviors in the relationship between perceived stress and QOL and multiple-group analysis was performed to evaluate differences between the caregiver groups. RESULTS: Of the 417 included caregivers, 210 (50.4%) were AD patient caregivers and 207 (49.6%) were ASD patient caregivers. In model testing, perceived stress was negatively associated with global QOL for both groups (i.e. direct effects) (estimate = −0.637, 95% CI: −0.777 to −0.529 for the ASD caregiver group; estimate = −0.601, 95% CI: −0.731 to −0.468 for the AD caregiver group). The only statistically significant indirect effect was perceived stress on global QOL through dysfunctional coping for the AD caregivers (estimate = −0.026, 95% CI: −0.048 to −0.005). None of the differences in indirect and direct effects between the two caregiver groups were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived stress was significantly associated with QOL among informal caregivers, irrespective of the condition of the patient cared for, be it AD or ASD. Dysfunctional coping strategies played a significant role in mediating this relationship only among AD caregivers. However, the two caregiver groups did not differ between them in appraisal of QOL. Stress management among caregivers will aid in their ability to have a good QOL.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".