Travel Constraints and Negative Mood Regulation of Informal Female Caregivers

• Main Authors: Cheng Li Yu, 鄭立瑜
• Other Authors: Pu Hsin-Hui
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74477400107514396082

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 觀光事業研究所 === 95 === The purpose of this study was to understand the informal female caregivers’ travel constraints, and their negative mood regulation in taking care of the patients who are their families, relatives or friends. The caregiver appraisal could be used to evaluate the caregivers’ situation or feelings of caring for their patients. The caregivers would have various emotion responses to their care situation, and different strategies for regulating their negative mood would be employed. Moreover, when the caregivers care for their patients, they may reduce their travel time or give it up. The travel constraints they may have are physical, social, and emotional. However, little attempt has been made to explore the relationships among the abovementioned variables for this special population. Therefore, a convenience sample of the informal female caregivers was chosen for the questionnaire survey. Two hundred and thirty respondents were interviewed and two hundred and fifteen questionnaires were available for further analysis. The valid response rate was 93.5%. Discriminate analysis and one-way ANOVA were used to test the distinctions of each other. It was found that the caregivers whose appraisal was less positive had stronger negative moods. The caregivers with different level of negative moods would choose significantly different strategies for negative mood regulation. These regulations included general, cognitive and behavioural items. The caregivers who had none or minimal depress applied more regulation strategies than these who had severe depress. Furthermore, the stronger the caregivers’ negative moods were, the higher level of travel constraints they would feel, and there were significant differences between negative moods and emotional constraints. The study has verified a part of the relationship between caregiver appraisal, travel constraints and negative mood regulation. The results could be applied further in other research.