Response patterns of older marrieds to questions regarding anticipated help

Abstract

This study investigated, responses, of older married persons to questions concerning anticipated availability of help and anticipated sources of help for seven in-home service areas: personal care, nursing care, physical therapy, continuous supervision, household chores, and meal preparation. Variables such as age, gender, level of impairment, proximity of nearest family member, and social resources served as independent variables for this study. Anticipated availability of, help and anticipated sources of help, specifically spouse, other family member, friend-neighbor, agency, or other, served as dependent variables.

The investigator's interest was to determine what variables influenced the choice of spouse versus other choices in, anticipated sources of help, and to examine gender differences in anticipated assistance. Use of chi square analysis determined the independence of variables characterizing older married respondents and their anticipated sources of help.

Respondents most frequently chose spouse as the anticipated source of help for all in-home services except physical therapy, where agency was the most frequently chosen source of help. Men anticipated help from spouse significantly more than did women. Women anticipated help from sources other than spouse more frequently than men.