No abstract

To move forward in this area, a consensus on the definition and dimensions of social support needs to occur which could be obtained through an evaluation of existing measures 1. Practitioners and researchers in rehabilitation need to study measures of social support in order to provide empirical support for scales used in professional practice and in research to expand understanding of this important construct.

Objective: To test a stress process model of caregiving for persons with traumatic brain injury. Design: A correlational study using path analysis. Participants: One hundred eight caregivers affiliated with community-or Web-based support groups. Main Outcome Measures: The Modified Caregiver Appraisal Scale, the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief Version, the Interpersonal Support Evaluation List, and the COPE. Results: The normed fit index, comparative fit index, and parsimony ratio indicated a good fit for the model, suggesting that coping, social support, and caregiving appraisal contribute to quality of life. A more parsimonious model was respecified and achieved a better fit with fewer paths and variables. Conclusions: Empirical support was found for the proposed caregiving stress process model, which appears to provide useful information for future research and clinical interventions.

The data mining approach (i.e., CHAID analysis) provided detailed information and insight about interactions among demographic variables, service patterns, and competitive employment rates through the segmentation of the sample into mutually exclusive homogeneous subgroups.