Predictors of caregiver burden among wife caregivers: a partial replication study

Abstract

This study was a partial replication of an earlier study by Robinson ( 1990) who investigated burden for wife caregivers with social support and burden as the guiding theoretical framework. A secondary analysis of data from a previous work by Phillips, Komnenich, & Killeen ( 1994) was utilized as the data set for this study. 9 This study was a correlational investigation which included 31 wife caregivers of disabled husbands. The purpose of the study was to gain a better understanding of how subjective and objective burdens are related to the caregiver's health, past marital adjustment, social status, number of years of the elder/caregiver marriage, number of elder's remarriages, and receipt of social support. Past marital adjustment was significantly correlated at p<0.05 to subjective burden and negatively correlated to objective burden and received social support; caregiver health was significantly correlated at p<0.05 to subjective burden and objective burden; and there was a difference in the amount of social support received between those caregivers married 0-10 years and those caregivers married >20 years.