Department of Nursing, The College of Medicine, Chungnam National University, Korea.
Abstract
The purposes of the study were to develop an instrument for family value and to identify the relationships of family value, family hardiness, and family adaptation by appling the family value scale to family with cancer children. The study was conducted in three phases. 1) A survey was conducted from July 20 to August 20, 1999 and 18 items of general family value scale was modified from the data of 153 fathers and 164 mothers. 2) In-depth interviews were made with 29 parents of cancer children from April 20, 1998 to May 20, 1999 to develop family value scale with cancer children, and 12 statements were developed. 3) The final survey was conducted from July 18, 2000 to August 30, 2000 and the data from 309 parents of children who are diagnosed as cancer, 18 or less years of age, and treated either hospitalized or at the outpatient clinics were analyzed to identify the relationships of the concepts. The data analysis utilized SAS 6.12 and LISREL 8 for descriptive statistics, correlation, and Regression for path analysis.
The study findings are as follows. The psychometric testing of general family value scale was Cronbach's alpha = 0.78.
The reliability of the family value scale with cancer children showed the reliability as Cronbach's alpha = 0.73.
Demographic characteristics showing significant correlations were cancer children's age, period of illness, period after completing treatment, mother's age, mother's education level, monthly income, payment type, confidence with health professional, and severity of children's illness. The correlation coefficients among major variables showed that family stressor was positively related with family strains(r=0.33, p < .001), and negatively related with family hardiness(r=-0.21, p < .001). Family strains was negatively related with family hardiness(r= -0.41, p < .001) and family adaptation(r=-0.46, p < .001). Correlations of family hardiness was positive with family value with cancer children(r=-0.31, p < .001), and negative with general family value(r=-0.16, p < .01). Family hardiness was positively related with family adaptation(r=0.35, p < .001).
The causal relationship between study variables showed that family strains predicts general family value( gamma =0.12, t=2.02), family value with cancer children predicts family hardiness( gamma =0.31, t=6.30), family strains predicts family hardiness( gamma =-0.40, t=-7.70), family value with cancer children predicts family adaptation( gamma =-0.23, t=-4.11), and family hardiness predicts family adaptation( gamma =0.43, t=7.78).
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