Carers needed for study to find out what helps you to adjust

[Bianca_1508]

To All Carers out there over the age of 18:
You may be interested in completing my online questionnaire for my Masters degree.This project will try and find the factors contributing to carers ability to adjust to their caring role. It will explore which factors predict acceptance of the new status quo and cared-for person’s condition and the changes the condition had on their relationship after becoming carers due to adverse life events. This study will attempt to investigate further how each predictor may influence adjustment and thus acceptance of the caring role and status quo.
Thank you for your help. The results of the study will be available around October time and I am looking forward to finding out the results and how they may help carers and policy.
Here is the link. Participation is anonymous
https://ueapsych.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?S ... Y7aZlCPJSB

[susieq]

This study has been approved by Administration

[Bianca_1508]

Lovely people out there I still need 75 of you to help with this study or I won't be able to produce valid results! Help!

[Bianca_1508]

Hello everybody
55 more participants needed. Please help make a difference!

[MumWhoCares]

Hello Bianca,

I did look at your questionnaire but didn't really feel it applied to me as I care for my son and my impression from some of the questions was that they related to adult to adult relationships rather than parent and child. I also, if I'm honest, don't have half an hour to sit and do a questionnaire. I hope that doesn't sound rude, I just didn't want to leave the post unanswered as you are obviously working very hard. I do hope you are able to get the number of participants you need to finish your project. All the best.

[bowlingbun]

I also looked at it, but it's too long. However, the very fact that carers are saying this should tell you a lot. We are incredibly "time poor". I also don't like admitting, even to myself, how I feel a lot of the time.

[ladybird]

Sorry Bianca, I'll be a little more brutal and say that this is a poorly thought out (and worded) questionnaire - in fact it looks more like the typical questioning that goes in line with diagnosing people with the differing types of depression prior to receiving Cognitive Behavioural therapy - I see very little that ties in with caring and what that consists of at all.
None of this applies to anyone who has been caring for somebody since birth, there is no "adjustment" or "status quo" in this type of care so a very large group of carers has been excluded - not good.
I wish you well with your Masters but can't see how this could be particularly helpful in making a difference to carers. Sorry.

[Greta]

Actually, Ladybird, Google confirms that. These are standard questions. I had also been puzzled to find a link to carers, but I didn't have the time to do the survey either.

[Bianca_1508]

Hello everyone
Yes there are standardised questionnaires in there and yes it's long. We can make more valid assumptions about the data when we use questionnaires that have clinically been validated. Part of the questions show us if someone feels low in mood or anxious but it's not to make a clinical diagnosis of depression etc as there are some questions that have been omitted and there is more to it diagnosing someone than just asking these kind of questions. In the statistical analysis of the data a computer program shows which factors are related to each other and which may stand out more for carers. Thank you for your feedback and valuable comments about time pressures in your lives. If you would like to discuss this further or want to have more input ie through commenting on what it's like for you to care for somebody please feel free to email me using the email address attached to the questionnaire. Again thanks for your comments

[Peter_150912]

Yes, I have to agree with other posters.

As a survey, its haphazard at best. I have studied at Post Grad level, and this questionnaire is badly constructed. Having said that I did attempt it, as I know how important raw data can be, but gave up at:

"I've been trying to find comfort in my religion or spiritual beliefs"

I am neither religious or spiritual, and am firmly a believer in nothing except what a person does or doesn't do. Ontology! It's not a question of whether I do or do not find comfort in religious/spiritual beliefs, I am simply incapable of holding those beliefs in the first instance!

The questionnaire is based on a false premise. Your use of the word "my" presupposes that all people hold either religious or spiritual beliefs. Quite clearly, they don't! It's like asking if I have driven my car in the last two weeks; all the time, a lot, a bit or not at all. The question excludes the possibility that I simply don't have a car!

With no tick box for atheism, it left me no where to go but - well back here to complain. To be fair to you, your tutor/leader should have gone through this with you! But you still wasted my time, hence my complaint! Any conclusions you draw from your survey would be meaningless. Therefore it's likely you'll be writing a book review for your Post Grad!