A prospective longitudinal study is proposed to examine the determinants of long-term coping among caregivers of dementia patients. A minimum of 200 initially mild to moderate demetia victims and their caregivers will be followed for a period of two-and-one-half years, with four waves of data collection. The initial two waves will be six months apart and the third and fourth waves will occur one year after the second and third, respectively. A broad conceptual model based on the existing literature on coping with chronic stress and on the extensive literature on caregiver coping will guide the data collection and analysis. The major categories of data to be collected include indicators of objective stress, perceived stress, and indicators of long-term coping. In addition, five types of conditioning variables will be examined: sociodemographic characteristics, social support, coping strategies used by the caregiver, two personality factors, and the nature of the relationship between caregiver and victim prior to the illness. Descriptive, covariance and structural modeling techniques (LISREL) will be used to answer fundamental questions regarding changes in stress and coping over time among caregivers of dementia patients and to test specific models identifying causal links between the variables identified in our conceptual framework.
