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Examining The Effects Of Caregiver Coping Strategies On Care Recipient Outcomes, Joseph S. Wanzek

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dementia is a progressive syndrome with declines in cognitive and functional abilities. As the world’s population becomes increasingly older, prevalence rates are expected to increase exponentially to over 80 million affected by the year 2040. Individuals with dementia and their caregivers experience various difficulties associated with progression that increases stress for both parties. Caregiving can be burdensome and caregivers may employ a number of strategies to manage problems as they arise. Renewed interest has been focused on the care environment as one way to modify dementia progression as caregivers can be an influential person in the care recipient’s life. Two …

Dementia Caregiver Personality Traits And Coping Strategies: Association With Care Recipient Outcomes, Christine M. Snyder

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study examined the potential impact of dementia caregivers’ personality traits and utilization of coping strategies on care recipients’ development of severe dementia, institutionalization, and mortality. Generally, the personality traits and coping strategies were not predictive of care recipient outcomes, especially related to the institutionalization of care recipients. However, increased caregiver use of Avoidance predicted time to care recipient development of severe dementia, while increased use of Counting Blessings reduced risk of mortality.

This research was conducted using extant data from a community-wide study examining factors that affect dementia progression. All data were collected by a research nurse and a …

The Ability Of The Coping Competence Questionnaire To Predict Resilience Against Learned Helplessness Among Undergraduate College Students: An Experimental Study, Cindy L. Ollis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Coping Competence Questionnaire (CCQ), based on the reformulated learned helplessness theory, was designed to assess a general stress resistance versus a propensity towards learned helplessness with a brief, 12-item self-report questionnaire. In this study the CCQ was administered to 247 undergraduate students, who were then paired, in groups of around 24 at a time, and then randomly assigned to either success or failure conditions on the computer game TetraVex. Mood was pretested using the Profile of Mood States (POMS) depression subscale; the experimental condition, success or failure at TetraVex was conducted; then outcome measures including 20 five letter anagrams …

The Significance Of Dispositional Optimism And Coping In Predicting Psychological Distress, Life Satisfaction, Health Perception, And Frequency Of Discharges In The Automatic Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (Aicd) Patient, Paul B. Damin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dispositional optimism, as a stable outcome expectancy, has been shown to predict health outcomes in several contexts. Research has demonstrated that health-impaired subjects with optimistic outlooks fared better than those with a pessimistic outlook. Choice of coping strategies has been theorized as the mediating factor through which optimism operates. However, the construct of dispositional optimism has been challenged as a polar opposite of neuroticism, thus contending that optimism is not an independent notion.

The present study was designed to evaluate further the theoretical underpinnings of dispositional optimism theory. Subjects were selected from a population of cardiac patients who received an …