Ferraris, Giulia and Zarzycki, Mikołaj and Gérain, Pierre and Elayan, Saif and Morrison, Val and Sanderman, Robbert and Hagedoorn, Mariët (2023) Does willingness to care fluctuate over time? A weekly diary study among informal caregivers. Psychology & Health. ISSN 0887-0446
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Abstract
Objective: Informal caregivers are expected to be willing to care for relatives with care needs. Little is known about whether and how willingness to care changes over time. Using a weekly diary study, we examined changes in the willingness of 955 caregivers from nine countries. Caregivers provided information on their caregiving context, relationship type, and relationship satisfaction with the care recipient.
Methods and measures: For 24 consecutive weeks, caregivers evaluated willingness to care as it was ‘right now’.
Results: Willingness differs from one caregiver to another (68% between-level variability) but also fluctuates in the same caregiver from week to week (32% within-level variability), with a decrease over 6 months (intercept = 8.55; slope = −0.93; p < .001). Regardless of individual differences in average willingness to care based on caregiving context and relationship satisfaction, caregivers reported decreases in willingness. Caregivers who presented one or more health conditions themselves reported higher weekly fluctuations in willingness than caregivers with no health conditions.
Conclusion: Willingness is not a stable attitude because it decreases and caregivers experience fluctuations from week to week. A clearer understanding of weekly processes is optimal for monitoring the caregivers’ well-being and tailoring interventions in line with weekly individual variations.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | The accepted article is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Informal caregiver, willingness to care, intensive longitudinal design, weekly diary study, within-processes, between-differences |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Mikolaj Zarzycki |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Sep 2023 10:41 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2023 10:41 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4012 |
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