| Author: | Lin, Lai-ying Anny |
| Title: | Parents of children with severe intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong : relationship among their perceived stress, coping strategies and subjective quality of life |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations. Parents of children with disabilities -- China -- Hong Kong -- Psychology Parents of children with disabilities -- China -- Hong Kong -- Attitudes |
| Department: | Department of Rehabilitation Sciences |
| Pages: | viii, 67 leaves ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Rearing a child with severe intellectual disabilities constitutes a wide range of stressors for the caregivers and such stressors would have impacts on the psychological wellbeing of the caregivers which could be moderated by coping strategy. Poor caregiver psychological health is found to associate with greater child disability (Leonard et al., 1993). However, very few studies have been carried out on Chinese parents having children with severe intellectual disabilities, and existing studies have only focused on describing the types of coping strategies used in the face of stress, without extending it to understanding their relationships with their subjective QOL. In addition, studies were found to adopt the coping strategy categorization used in Western countries without considering the unique coping style and experience of Chinese people. The present study investigated the caring stress, the coping strategies and the subjective wellbeing of parents with children having severe intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong. In addition, the relationship between different coping strategies, their levels of perceived stress and subjective wellbeing of the parents was examined. A cross-sectional survey with self-administered questionnaire was conducted with 54 parents of children who have severe intellectual disabilities. Convenient sampling from "The Association of Parents of the Severely Mentally Handicapped" in Hong Kong was used. The Chinese version of the Caregiving Stress Scale, the Chinese Coping Scale, and the Chinese version of the Personal Wellbeing Index were used to investigate the stress level, coping style and the subjective wellbeing for the participants. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the demographic variables, the coping methods, level of stress in caring and the source of stress. Spearman correlation was used to examine the association between the stress level, different coping strategies and the participant's subjective QOL. The results indicated that the common stressors for the 54 parents with children having severe intellectual disabilities were caregiving tasks, future planning and child's health. They encountered stress in caregiving tasks such as bathing, toileting, shopping, lifting and physically handling. They used both internal and external coping strategies. The internal coping strategies appeared more likely to be employed to manage the major stressors and they were less likely to sought help from others. The participants had generally lower subjective QOL with the Personal Wellbeing Index score = 50.6 (mean = 6.6) when compared to the Hong Kong general population (Personal Wellbeing Index score = 66.7, mean = 4.7). The caregiving stress encountered by the parents were negatively but mildly correlated with the subjective QOL (r=0.33, p<0.05). This correlation indicates that the higher the stress encountered by the parents, the lower was the subjective QOL experience. The present study also shows that both the caring stress and the subjective QOL of the parents were insignificantly correlated with the coping strategies adopted. Forward stepwise regression analyses showed that a higher level of family income, others perception in taking care of the children and internal coping strategy were significant predictors of QOL as perceived by parents. This study urges a need for service providers to evaluate the services delivered. Service providers should be sensitive to the caregiving stress support needs of the parents, especially with regard to providing assistance with handling the caregiving tasks. As parents adopt a better ways to tackle their caregiving tasks, parenting stress could be ameliorated. More attentions have to be paid to cultivate and promote healthy help-seeking coping pattern amongst the parents and help them to improve their quality of life. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b23025177.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 4.4 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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