Psycho-Social Predictors of Posttraumatic Growth Among Cancer Patients

Abstract

Present study examined the psychosocial determinants of posttraumatic growth among cancer patients. This research was completed in two phases and for steps. In phase I, step 1 was translation of Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008) in Urdu to make it culturally and linguistically appropriate. Step 2 was pilot study which was carried out to assess the preliminary psychometric properties of study measures and relationship of study variables. 50 cancer patients were approached for pilot study and data was collected from them. Phase II in the present research was main study. The sample of main study comprised of (N = 204) cancer patients. The age range of the sample ranges from 18 to 100 years (M = 50.30, SD = 14.26). Purposive sampling technique was used and the inclusion criteria for the sample were minimum 6 months‘ cancer duration and able to understand Urdu language. Main study was carried out to validate the factor structure of study variables in targeted population, to explore the objectives and to test the hypotheses. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was done on all study variables. The results of CFA have shown model fit for all study variables to the data. In addition, descriptive statistics showed that data is normally distributed and reliability estimates also provide an evidence for internal consistency. Correlation analysis indicated that resilience significantly positively correlated with perceived social support, adaptive cognitive emotional regulation strategies (CERS) and posttraumatic growth (PTG). Resilience negatively related to stress and maladaptive cognitive emotional regulation strategies (CERS). Furthermore, stress significantly negatively correlated with perceived social support, adaptive CERS and posttraumatic growth. stress positively related to maladaptive CERS. Perceived social support is positively correlated adaptive CERS and posttraumatic growth. In contrast, perceived social support negatively related to maladaptive CER. Adaptive CERS positively correlated to PTG, and maladaptive CER negatively correlated to PTG. Moreover, stepwise regression was carried out to assess the predictive role of resilience, perceived social support and CERS in PTG. Results showed that these variables significantly predicted PTG. Mediating role of perceived social support and CERS in the relationship between resilience and PTG as well as stress and PTG was also explored. Results of mediation showed that perceived social support and CERS significantly mediate the relationship between resilience and PTG as well as stress and PTG. Moreover, moderating role of age and surgery in the relationship between resilience and PTG as well as stress and PTG respectively was xiii also explored. Results showed a significant moderating role of these two variables. Furthermore, t.test was carried out to assess the mean differences of different demographic variables (gender, family system) across all study variables. Results indicated that female and patients who living in a joint family system are more likely to perceive social support and experience higher PTG. In addition, ANOVA was carried out to see the mean differences of age, education and type of cancer where younger patient, patients who had graduate and above level of education and patients who had brain cancer scored high on resilience, perceived social support, adaptive CERS and PTG and its all domains. Findings were discussed in the light of empirical evidences and suggestions were given for future studies as well.