This is a panel study involving impaired elders and relatives who attempt to meet their care needs. In the study's initial three years the family problem-solving process conceptual framework was tested using 131 family units comprised of impaired elders living with spouse caregivers and who have proximate adult children and widowed impaired elders living alone with proximate adult-child caregivers. The problem-solving framework was utilized to differentiate various sources of stress and related effects in family functioning; that is, stress resulting from caregiving burdens and stress related to the process in which families attempt to solve the problem of caring for an impaired elder at home. Additionally, comparison groups made up of elder spouse and adult-child respondents with unimpaired elders were matched to the 131 primary caregivers to disassociate stress effects related to the care situation from those """"""""normatively"""""""" found in families. Continuation of the panel design for another three waves will allow application of the problem-solving framework to four other family situations as the caregiving families becomes faced with major changes in the elder's status or living arrangements; the elder's institutional entry; the elder's death and family bereavement; the elder's relocation and shared residence with a child, and """"""""chronic"""""""" stress due to long-term home care of the elder. Moreover, the matched comparison sample will be expanded to include other relevant family members of the comparison subjects so that complete family unit data will be available for analysis of family relationships and related stress effects in """"""""normal"""""""" later-life families. When the elders in these families become impaired and """"""""roll over"""""""" into the caregiving group, the pre-impairment data will be examined in relation to the problem-solving process around the elder's care needs. The research design includes longitudinal analyses of purposive samples of caregiving and non-caregiving family units. The study is unique in its creation and use of family unit measures derived from survey interview data and from clinical assessments that will yield observational data on family units. Bivariate, multivariate, and panel data analysis techniques will be used in cross-sectional comparisons of sample groups and for change over time analysis.
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