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PREDICTING SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE:
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF PERSONALITY AND
PERCEIVED CONTROL
By
Rachel Cousins
B.B.Sc. Hons
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctorate of Psychology (Clinical)
Deakin University
October 2001
DEAKIN UNIVERSITY
CANDIDATE DECLARATION
I certify that the thesis entitled:
Predicting Subjective Quality of Life: The Contributions of Personality and
Perceived Control
submitted for the degree of Doctor of Psychology (Clinical) is the result of my own
research, except where otherwise acknowledged, and that this thesis in whole or in
part has not be submitted for an award, including a higher degree, to any other
university or institution.
Full Name: RACHEL LOUISE COUSINS
Signed: ………………………………….
Date: ………………………………….
Preliminary Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would firstly like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of my
family and friends. Thank you to my partner, Ashley, the last three years would not
have been possible without his love and support. Thank you to my mother for her
constant prayers, and thank you to my Grandmother, who frequently has me in her
thoughts. Thank you to Alana for her support throughout my tertiary education and
for all those lessons in grammar. Thank you also to Garrick for proof reading the final
copy. I would also like to thank my classmates and friends who have been a great
support over the years, and never seem to tire of listening to me talking about my
studies.
This project could not have been undertaken and completed without the
guidance of my supervisor, Professor Bob Cummins, whose positivity was a great
source of motivation. Thank you.
I would also like to thank the contribution of the Schizophrenia Fellowship of
Victoria and all the carers who, despite their burden, found time to participate in the
study. Thank you also to the schools involved for providing me with access to
participants. To all the participants who completed the questionnaires, thank you for
your contribution.
Finally, thank you to all those who over the past ten years have inspired me to
study psychology.
iii
Preliminary Pages
ABSTRACT
Subjective quality of life is remarkably stable within populations and it has
been proposed that this us due to the operation of a homeostatic system. It has been
proposed also that central to the operation of such homeostasis, and the key to system
stability, is the strong relationship between subjective quality of life and personality.
This prompts questions about what other psychological processes are involved in this
relationship, and the literature indicates that perceived control has important links to
both constructs. Hence, in order to develop further understanding about these
relationships, this research primarily examines the relationships between personality,
conceptualised as extroversion and neuroticism, perceived control, conceptualised as
approach control and avoidant control, and subjective quality of life. Two linked
studies are described.
The first examines these relationships in a sample of carers of people with
mental illness, in comparison with a sample of people from the general population
who do not care for someone with a disability. It was found that carers had
significantly lower subjective quality of life, particularly in the domains of health and
emotional well-being, significantly lower approach control and extroversion, and
significantly higher neuroticism, than the comparison sample. In the carer sample,
regression analyses showed that with all variables in the equation, neuroticism,
approach control and avoidant control significantly predicted subjective quality of life,
whilst extroversion made no significant contribution to the equation. Additionally,
neuroticism significantly predicted approach control. In the comparison sample,
regression analyses showed that with all variables in the equation, only approach
control significantly predicted subjective quality of life, whilst neuroticism,
extroversion and avoidant control made no significant contributions to the equation.
Additionally, neuroticism significantly predicted approach control. It was concluded
that when subjective quality of life homeostasis is being challenged, as in the carer
sample, its maintenance becomes more complicated.
The second study examines these relationships in a sample of public secondary
school teachers, in comparison with a sample of people from the general population.
There were no significant differences between the two samples, therefore the samples
iv
Preliminary Pages
were combined. The results of the regression analyses showed that with all variables
in the equation, neuroticism and approach control significantly predicted subjective
quality of life, whilst avoidant control approached significance and extroversion made
no significant contribution to the equation. Additionally, neuroticism significantly
predicted avoidant control and extroversion significantly predicted approach control.
It was concluded that extroversion and approach control together impact positively on
subjective quality of life and neuroticism and avoidant control together impact
negatively on subjective quality of life. Moreover, further support was given for the
conclusion that when subjective quality of life homeostasis is being challenged its
maintenance becomes more complicated.
Overall, there is some support for a model whereby personality, primarily
neuroticism, and perceived control, primarily approach control, contribute to
subjective quality of life. Furthermore, the three samples used in this research
represent different levels of subjective quality of life. The comparison sample in
Study One had high normal subjective quality of life, the combined sample in Study
Two had normal subjective quality of life and the carer sample in Study One had low
normal subjective quality of life. The resultant model of relationships for each of
these samples demonstrates that the management of subjective quality of life
homeostasis becomes more complicated as it is challenged.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1..............................................................................................................................................1
1 INTRODUCTION TO STUDY ONE..............................................................................................1
1.1 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE...........................................................................................21.1.1 The historical development of life quality research............................................................21.1.2 Definitions of various indicators of life quality..................................................................31.1.3 The definition and measurement of subjective quality of life.............................................51.1.4 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................7
1.2 PERSONALITY.........................................................................................................................81.2.1 Introduction.........................................................................................................................81.2.2 The relationships between extroversion and neuroticism, positive and negative affect,
and life quality....................................................................................................................91.2.3 The relationships between personality and other psychological processes that may
impact on subjective quality of life...................................................................................111.2.4 Conclusion........................................................................................................................13
1.3 PERCEIVED CONTROL.........................................................................................................141.3.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................141.3.2 Developing a definition of primary and secondary control..............................................151.3.3 Addressing the interaction between primary and secondary control...............................171.3.4 The literature on primary, secondary and relinquished control,and various indicators
of well-being......................................................................................................................201.3.5 The measurement of primary, secondary and relinquished control.................................211.3.6 Conclusion........................................................................................................................23
1.4 INTEGRATING PERSONALITY, PERCEIVED CONTROL AND SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE...................................................................................................................23
1.4.1 Maintaining subjective quality of life...............................................................................231.4.2 Rationale for a hypothesised model of personality, perceived control and subjective
quality of life.....................................................................................................................251.4.3 Focus of the current research...........................................................................................27
1.5 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE: CARERS OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS . 281.5.1 The historical development of research into carers of people with mental illness...........281.5.2 The impact of the caregiving role on subjective quality of life.........................................291.5.3 The role of perceived control in coping with the impact of mental illness on the family
and maintaining subjective quality of life.........................................................................341.5.4 Conclusion........................................................................................................................371.5.5 Focus of the current research...........................................................................................37
CHAPTER 2............................................................................................................................................39
2 STUDY ONE: AIMS AND HYPOTHESES.................................................................................39
CHAPTER 3............................................................................................................................................40
3 STUDY ONE: METHOD...............................................................................................................40
3.1 SAMPLE ...................................................................................................................................403.2 PROCEDURE...............................................................................................................................413.3 MEASUREMENT TOOLS................................................................................................................42
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CHAPTER 4............................................................................................................................................44
4 STUDY ONE: RESULTS...............................................................................................................44
4.1 AIM ONE ...................................................................................................................................444.2 DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION........................................................................................................474.3 AIM TWO ...................................................................................................................................514.4 AIM THREE ................................................................................................................................53
CHAPTER 5............................................................................................................................................58
5 STUDY ONE: DISCUSSION.........................................................................................................58
5.1 AIM ONE ...................................................................................................................................585.2 AIM TWO ...................................................................................................................................595.3 AIM THREE ................................................................................................................................635.4 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................66
CHAPTER 6............................................................................................................................................68
6 INTRODUCTION TO STUDY TWO..........................................................................................68
6.1 APPROACH AND AVOIDANT DIMENSIONS OF PERCEIVED CONTROL...................696.1.1 Theoretical support for approach and avoidant control..................................................696.1.2 Empirical support for approach and avoidant control.....................................................716.1.3 The measurement of approach and avoidant control.......................................................746.1.4 Conclusion........................................................................................................................76
6.2 PERSONALITY, APPROACH AND AVOIDANT CONTROL AND SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE...................................................................................................................76
6.2.1 The literature on approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of life..............766.2.2 The findings from Study One on approach and avoidant control and subjective
quality of life.....................................................................................................................786.2.3 Personality and approach and avoidant control..............................................................806.2.4 Integrating personality, approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of life. . .816.2.5 Focus of the current research...........................................................................................82
6.3 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE IN SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS...................826.3.1 The stressors associated with teaching.............................................................................826.3.2 The impact of stress on teachers' subjective quality of life and the role of
coping strategies...............................................................................................................836.3.3 Conclusion and focus of the current research..................................................................85
CHAPTER 7............................................................................................................................................87
7 STUDY TWO: AIMS AND HYPOTHESES................................................................................87
CHAPTER 8............................................................................................................................................88
8 STUDY TWO: METHOD..............................................................................................................88
8.1 SAMPLE ...................................................................................................................................888.2 PROCEDURE...............................................................................................................................898.3 MEASUREMENT TOOLS................................................................................................................90
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CHAPTER 9............................................................................................................................................92
9 STUDY TWO: RESULTS..............................................................................................................92
9.1 AIM ONE ...................................................................................................................................929.2 AIM TWO ...................................................................................................................................979.3 AIM THREE...............................................................................................................................1009.4 ADDITIONAL ANALYSES..............................................................................................................102
CHAPTER 10........................................................................................................................................105
10 STUDY TWO: DISCUSSION.....................................................................................................105
10.1 AIM ONE...................................................................................................................................... 105
10.2 AIM TWO......................................................................................................................................106
10.3 AIM THREE.............................................................................................................................10710.4 ADDITIONAL ANALYSES............................................................................................................11010.5 SUMMARY...............................................................................................................................110
CHAPTER 11........................................................................................................................................112
11 SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS..........................................................................................112
12 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................118
13 APPENDICES...............................................................................................................................129
APPENDIX A: INFORMATION LETTER FOR QUESTIONNAIRE 1.............................................................APPENDIX B: QUESTIONNAIRE 1.........................................................................................................APPENDIX C: INFORMATION LETTER FOR QUESTIONNAIRE 2.............................................................APPENDIX D: QUESTIONNAIRE 2.........................................................................................................APPENDIX E: SCALES AND ITEMS OF THE COPING RESPONSES INVENTORY......................................
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TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: The direct and indirect prediction of subjective quality of life (SQOL) by personality and perceived control...............................................................................................................................25
Figure 2: Hypothesised model of subjective quality of life, personality and perceived control.............27
Figure 3: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control, avoidant control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the carer sample, including standardised regression coefficients and correlations.......................................................................64
Figure 4: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control, avoidant control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the carer sample incorporating a latent construct for perceived control...............................................................................................65
Figure 5: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the comparison sample, including standardised regression coefficients......................................................................................................................65
Figure 6: Model of the significant relationships among the variables, neuroticism, ............extroversion, approach control, avoidant control, and total subjective quality of life (SQOL), in the combined sample, including standardised regression coefficients and correlations.......................108
Figure 7: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the comparison sample in Study One, representing high normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 5)..........115
Figure 8: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the combined sample in Study Two, representing normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 6)............................116
Figure 9: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the carer sample, representing low normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 3)...................................................116
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Preliminary Pages
TABLE OF TABLES
Table 1: Demographic information.........................................................................................................41
Table 2: Two factor solution for the Perceived Control Questionnaire, with primary control items (PC) and secondary control items (SC) identified...........................................................................46
Table 3: Means (M), standard deviations (SD) and bi-variate correlations for the variables total subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the carer sample and the comparison sample.............................................................................48
Table 4: Multivariate Analysis of Variance examining the differences between the carer and comparison samples for the variables: total subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion...............................................................................50
Table 5: Multivariate analysis of covariance with group (carer or comparison) as the independent variable, the seven SQOL domains as the dependent variables, and ....neuroticism and extroversion as the covariates...................................................................................................53
Table 6: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the carer sample...................................................................................54
Table 7: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the comparison sample.........................................................................55
Table 8: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the carer sample..........................................................................................................................56
Table 9: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the comparison sample...............................................................................................................57
Table 10: Background information.........................................................................................................89
Table 11: Description of the scales in the Coping Response Inventory.................................................91
Table 12: Means, standard deviations (SD) and internal consistencies (Alpha) of the Coping Responses Inventory........................................................................................................................96
Table 13: Factor solution for the eight scales of the Coping Responses Inventory................................97
Table 14: Means (M), standard deviations (SD) and bi-variate correlations for the variables subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the combined teacher and comparison sample (n=171)........................................99
Table 15: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the combined sample.........................................................................101
Table 16: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the combined sample................................................................................................................102
Table 17: Means, standard deviations and bi-variate correlations for the variables subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the two subgroups, high and low subjective quality of life........................................................................103
Table 18: Multivariate Analysis of Variance examining the differences between the subgroups, high and low subjective quality of life, for the variables approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion.........................................................................................................103
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CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
CHAPTER 1
1 INTRODUCTION TO STUDY ONE
The focus of Study One is to develop understanding of how subjective
quality of life is maintained. The relevant literature is first reviewed. This begins
by tracing the development of the subjective quality of life concept and evidence
that this variable is actively maintained. Following this, the psychological
processes that may contribute to the maintenance of subjective quality of life are
considered. The literature indicates that personality and perceived control are
important processes to consider. In particular, the personality characteristics
extroversion and neuroticism have been consistently shown in the literature to
predict various concepts of subjective life quality. Perceived control is also
indicated in the literature to have a predictive relationship with subjective quality
of life. Perceived control is conceptualised as involving primary, secondary and
relinquished control processes. A model of personality, perceived control and
subjective quality of life is then proposed.
The population selected to be the focus of Study One is carers of people
with mental illness. Carers make an informative population in which to investigate
these three variables, as they are likely to have low subjective quality of life and
may be vulnerable to losses in perceived control. Hence, the stress and coping
literature on carers is also reviewed. This introductory section of Study One
concludes with a brief statement concerning the focus of the current research.
The aims and hypotheses highlight the three parts of the study: 1) an
investigation of the factor structure of perceived control, 2) an investigation of the
differences between samples of carers of people with mental illness and people
from the general population, and 3) an examination of the relationships between
personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life. The method section
provides information about the characteristics of the two samples, the recruitment
procedures and the measurement tools used. The results and discussion sections
reflect the three parts of the aims and hypotheses. The results are discussed in
comparison with the literature and preliminary conclusions are drawn.
1
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
1.1 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE
1.1.1 The historical development of life quality researchThe quality of life concept arose from research in America on social
indicators. In the 1960’s it became evident that, in order to facilitate broader
analyses of the costs and benefits of various programs and policies, there was a
need to develop a means for assessing social change beyond that afforded by the
economic indexes already monitored (Land, 1999). Influential publications, such
as “Toward a Social Report” by the Johnson administration (1969; cited in Land,
1999), addressed major social issues, such as health, income, safety, education
etc., and introduced the idea of systematically reporting the state of these issues for
the purpose of informing the public. These initial social indicators were
objectively measured and reflected normative interest in populations or groups,
such as unemployment rates or mortality rates. Then, in the 1970’s the social
indicators movement gathered pace. It was at this time the concept of measuring
individuals' subjective judgements of their own well-being was introduced in
published works such as those by Andrews and Withey (1976), and Campbell,
Converse and Rodgers (1976). The movement then slowed in the political climate
of the 1980’s in America, but research on subjective quality of life had been
launched as the subjective indicator of social change (Land, 1999).
From this point it was recognised that economic growth at the population
level was not necessarily the only valid goal of societal progress and that the
subjective life quality of populations was also a valid and relevant goal (Shea,
1976). The measurement of social indicators became focused on understanding
individuals’ feelings of satisfaction with life-as-a-whole or with a number of
relevant areas or domains, such as family, housing etc. It has now become well
accepted that both objective variables and subjective variables are important social
indicators and a large volume of research around these concepts has now
developed (Cummins, 1997a).
2
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
1.1.2 Definitions of various indicators of life quality Definitions of subjective well-being, life satisfaction, subjective quality of
life are somewhat confused in the literature. For the purpose of this thesis, the
following taxonomy will be adopted.
Subjective well-being is considered to have two components: a cognitive
judgement of life satisfaction and an evaluation of affect (Diener, 1998).
Measures of subjective well-being usually reflect these two parts. The first part,
life satisfaction, can be measured in two ways. It can be measured with one
question, which asks the respondent “How do you feel about your life as a whole?”
(Andrews & Withey, 1976). Alternatively, it can be measured with a series of
questions that gauge the respondent’s satisfaction with a variety of different life
domains. However, the unitary approach to measuring life satisfaction is limited,
as it yields only a crude measure of perceived well-being that lacks the variety of
information about various aspects of life that a domain-based measure of life
satisfaction can provide. The domain-based measure of life satisfaction is often
referred to in the literature as subjective quality of life and the specific domains
measured vary. Extensive argument and evaluation of the life domains that should
be included in the measurement of subjective quality of life has been provided by
Cummins (1997a) and will be detailed shortly.
The second part of the subjective well-being construct involves an affective
evaluation. This evaluation usually comprises a measure of positive and negative
emotional feelings. Yet, there are problems with the definition and measurement
of positive and negative affect. The debate, over whether positive and negative
affect should be viewed as bipolar opposites of the one construct or two
independent constructs, is ongoing. Russell and Carroll (1999) give a detailed
account of this debate and some steps towards resolution. They propose a
circumplex model of positive and negative affect that incorporates six clusters of
affect items defined by valence and activation. These include, positive affect/high
activation (eg. excited, elated, ebullient) opposed by negative affect/low activation
(eg. depressed, bored, lethargic), positive affect/medium activation (eg. happy,
pleased, content) opposed by negative affect/medium activation (eg. miserable,
unhappy, discontent), and positive affect/low activation (eg. calm, serene, tranquil)
3
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
opposed by negative affect/high activation (eg. tense, nervous, upset). This model
highlights a glaring deficiency in the measure of positive and negative affect by
the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark & Tellegen,
1988), which is commonly used when evaluating subjective well-being. This
measure evaluates only positive affect/high activation and negative affect/high
activation, leaving out the range of low activation emotions that are potentially
important when considering subjective well-being. The usefulness of this
circumplex model of affect is highlighted by Larsen and Diener (1992), who also
point out that those researchers who use the Positive Affect and Negative Affect
Schedule may not be investigating the particular emotion concept that they hope
to. Hence, whilst the definition of subjective well-being is clear, as life
satisfaction plus affect, its operationalisation is complicated.
A further problem with subjective well-being is that it is often confused in
the literature with other terms such as psychological well-being and happiness.
For example, Friedman (1993) and Francis (1999) both measure subjective well-
being but refer to their measured constructs as psychological well-being and
happiness respectively. More accurately, psychological well-being is a term used
to reflect measures of psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety, in
conjunction with measures of life satisfaction and in some instances positive and
negative affect. For example, Lipkus, Dalbert & Seigler (1996) use measures of
depression, stress and life satisfaction to reflect psychological well-being.
Happiness is a term more accurately used to describe a balance of positive and
negative affect. For example, Mroczeck and Kolarz (1998) measure happiness
using positive and negative affect, while Costa and McCrae (1980) measure
happiness using the difference between positive and negative affect.
In summary, subjective well-being provides a higher order construct than
subjective quality of life by incorporating life satisfaction plus positive and
negative affect. However, subjective quality of life can provide a construct that is
similar to subjective well-being when satisfaction with emotional well-being is
included in the life domains, making an additional measure of affect unnecessary.
Furthermore, the definition and measurement of positive and negative affect,
commonly used in the measurement of subjective well-being, is deficient in the
4
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
range of emotions encompassed as it often only measures positive affect/high
activation and negative affect/high activation. Also the construct of subjective
well-being is often confused in the literature with psychological well-being and
happiness. This makes subjective quality of life a more attractive measure than the
popularly used and confused subjective well-being.
To recap the terms used in this thesis:
Subjective well-being will be used to refer to composite measures of
life satisfaction and affect.
Subjective quality of life will be used to refer to measures of life
satisfaction involving several life domains.
Life satisfaction will be used to refer to measures of life satisfaction
derived from one global question.
1.1.3 The definition and measurement of subjective quality of lifeThe definition and measurement of quality of life has been
comprehensively developed by Cummins (1997a):
Quality of life is both objective and subjective, each axis being the aggregate of
seven domains: material well-being, health, productivity, intimacy, safety,
community and emotional well-being. Objective domains comprise culturally
relevant measures of objective well-being. Subjective domains comprise domain
satisfaction weighted by their importance to the individual. (p. 132)
This definition is consistent with the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale
(ComQol) also developed by Cummins (1997b) and thus warrants further
explanation.
Firstly, this definition highlights an important difference between objective
and subjective quality of life. Objective quality of life is measured using sources
of information external to the individual. For example, income or physical health.
In contrast, subjective quality is measured using the individual as the source of
information. For example, the individual may be asked how satisfied they are with
their income or health. The degree to which these two constructs are interrelated
has long been debated (Andrews & Withey, 1976; Felce & Perry, 1995). But,
there appears to be a general consensus that the two are generally unrelated, as
5
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
satisfaction with life is considered a separate and more important indicator of
individual welfare (Edgerton, 1990).
Secondly, this definition specifies seven domains, material well-being,
health, productivity, intimacy, safety, community and emotional well-being, of
which quality of life is the aggregate. These seven domains represent the common
areas of life used in the literature to measure quality of life. Four of these domains
were shown by Campbell, et al. (1976) to be those rated as the most important of a
larger set of domains found most consistently in the literature. Their results
showed subjects rated most importance, expressed as a percentage, for Health
91%, Intimacy 89%, Material Well-being 73%, and Productivity 70%. In a review
of fifteen key literature sources, Felce and Perry (1995) found these four domains
plus emotional well-being to be the most commonly used domains of life quality.
Hence, five of the seven domains used in the definition have been consistently
used in the literature and are considered important aspects of life.
The two additional domains, safety and place in community, have been
included to encompass a broader range of life domains. The domain ‘safety’ is
intended to be inclusive of such constructs as security, personal control, privacy,
independence, autonomy, competence, knowledge of rights and residential
stability. Aspects of this domain are encompassed by Felce and Perry’s (1995)
conceptualisation of material well-being, whereby, security is considered to be
related to income, stability of tenure and housing. However, it is often included as
a separate domain in the literature (Borthwick-Duffy, 1990; Schalock, Kieth,
Hoffman & Karan, 1989; Stark & Goldsbury, 1990). The domain ‘place in
community’ is intended to be inclusive of the constructs of (objective) social class,
education, job status, community integration, community involvement and
(subjective) a sense of self-esteem, self-concept and empowerment within the
community, in addition to feelings associated with the objective components.
Aspects of this domain are encompassed by Felce and Perry’s (1995)
conceptualisation of social well-being. However, Cummins (1997a) has specified
the two aspects of social well-being, intimacy and place in community, as two
separate domains, which is often done in the literature (Borthwick-Duffy, 1990;
Schalock, et al., 1989; Stark & Goldsbury, 1990). With these seven domains
6
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
included, the definition and measurement of quality of life effectively covers a
broad spectrum of life quality.
Lastly, this definition introduces the notion that subjective quality of life
should be measured with reference to the value or importance that the domain has
to the relevant individual. This notion, that subjective quality of life refers to the
subjective evaluations of various domains weighted by a personal set of values,
has been supported theoretically (Felce & Perry, 1995; Cummins, 1997a) and more
recently the important role of values has been demonstrated empirically by Oishi,
Diener, Suh, and Lucas (1999). These authors found that values mediated the
relationship between domain satisfaction and life satisfaction. Using regression
analysis they found that the stronger the values of achievement, the stronger the
relation between satisfaction with grades and global life satisfaction. Similarly,
the stronger the benevolence values are, the stronger the relation between
satisfaction with social life and life satisfaction, and the stronger the conformity
values, the stronger the association between satisfaction with family and life
satisfaction. The appeal of this ‘satisfaction weighted by importance’ definition is
obvious. Most people would not value each domain equally and those domains
that they do value more will have a greater impact on how satisfied they are with
life. Hence, the ComQol provides a score of subjective quality of life for each
domain which is the product of item importance by satisfaction, and the seven
domains can be summed together to provide an overall score of life satisfaction
(Cummins 1997b).
1.1.4 ConclusionHistorically, social indicators have been developed to evaluate the
effectiveness of programs and policies by using objective and subjective indicators
to describe populations and monitor change within them. The definition and
measurement of social indicators is complex and can involve a number of terms
and concepts. One of these is subjective quality of life conceptualised as the
product of seven domains and involving domain satisfaction weighted by
importance (Cummins, 1997a, 1997b). This construct is similar in nature to the
more popular subjective well-being but does not incorporate some of the problems
7
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
associated with the operationalisation of subjective well-being. In particular it
avoids the problems of measuring separately positive and negative emotional
feelings.
With subjective quality of life established as a valid and useful social
indicator, it then becomes important to better understand this measure by
considering the psychological processes that contribute to an individual's
satisfaction with different areas of their life. The notion that subjective quality of
life is remarkably stable within populations (a point that will be later elaborated)
indicates that personality, also a stable psychological process, may play an
important role in the maintenance of subjective quality of life.
1.2 PERSONALITY
1.2.1 Introduction There is substantial evidence that subjective well-being is predicted by
personality. For the purposes of empirical research, personality refers to
“characteristic response tendencies” which are considered to have both “biological
and learned components” (Diener, 1998, p. 314). It is thought that around 50
percent of personality variance is attributed to genetic variance and around 30
percent is attributed to environmentally based trait variance (or learned) with the
remainder attributable to measurement error (Tellegen, et al., 1988).
The evidence that personality predicts subjective well-being across time
and situations has been used to support the causal role in the relationship between
personality and subjective well-being (Diener, 1998). This however is questioned
by those who argue that subjective well-being is, in fact, a personality trait itself
(Lykken & Tellegen, 1996). Evidence from twin studies has suggested that about
80 percent of the stable variance in subjective well-being is heritable (Lykken &
Tellegen, 1996). However, the most compelling argument against the notion that
subjective well-being is a personality trait is that it is variable in the short-term
(Diener, 1996). It has been found that major life events impact on subjective well-
being for up to three months, after which subjective well-being returns to a
8
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
baseline measure (Suh, Diener & Fujita, 1996). It is also argued by Diener (1996)
that trait explanations of psychological constructs like subjective well-being are
not sufficient, because they do not provide any understanding about the process by
which traits influence subjective well-being.
However, before examining other psychological processes, it is first
necessary to develop a better understanding of the relationship between personality
and various constructs of life quality by considering how personality is commonly
measured.
1.2.2 The relationships between extroversion and neuroticism, positive and negative affect, and life quality
A popular typology of personality traits is the five-factor model (Goldberg,
1992). These factors are neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience,
agreeableness and conscientiousness, and they have been substantiated extensively
in the literature (Costa & McCrae, 1998). Yet, investigations have shown that it is
extroversion and neuroticism that provide the most pervasively significant
correlations with subjective well-being. Extroversion and subjective well-being
correlate positively ranging from .35 to .49; and neuroticism and subjective well-
being correlate negatively ranging from -.31 to -.57 (Costa & McCrae, 1980;
Francis, 1999; Francis, Brown, Lester & Philipchalk, 1998; Lu & Shih, 1997).
Similarly, a few researchers have investigated the relationship between
extroversion and neuroticism, and subjective quality of life or life satisfaction.
Morrison (1997) did this with a sample of business owners and Heaven (1989)
with a sample of adolescents. The correlational results between life satisfaction
and extroversion were .31 and .17, and neuroticism were -.44 and -.37, for the two
studies respectively (Morrison, 1997; Heaven, 1989).
Furthermore, it is extroversion and neuroticism that have received long
standing support in many typological conceptualisations of personality, including
Eysenck’s factor analytic research (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). They are
popularly conceptualised in terms of sociability (extroversion) and emotional
instability (neuroticism). More specifically extroversion describes a personality
9
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
disposition that reflects sociability, stimulus seeking, dominance, high activity and
warmth (Diener, 1998). Neuroticism is a term used to describe a personality
disposition that reflects anxiety, pessimism, irritability, bodily complaints and
interpersonal sensitivity (Diener, 1998). Hence, it may be concluded that
subjective quality of life is associated with sociability and emotional stability.
Further evidence for the significant relationship between extroversion and
neuroticism and subjective quality of life is provided by research on positive and
negative affect and life satisfaction. The relationship between these two concepts
are frequently reported in the subjective well-being literature as they are the two
components of subjective well-being. It has been found repeatedly that
extroversion correlates highly with positive affect, ranging from .20 to .63, and
that neuroticism correlates highly with negative affect, ranging from .36 to .75
(Costa & McCrae, 1980; Fogarty, et al., 1999; Francis, et al., 1998; Fujita, 1993
unpublished masters thesis provided by the author; Mroczeck & Kolarz, 1998;
Wilson, Gullone & Moss, 1998). This finding is not surprising considering the
common definition and measurement of extroversion and neuroticism, and positive
and negative affect, used in the literature.
The measurement of extroversion and neuroticism is primarily based on the
definition given previously. This is in many ways similar to the common
definition and measurement of positive and negative affect using the Positive and
Negative Affect Schedule. Here, positive affect refers to an affective disposition
that encompasses feelings such as happiness and joy and is often assessed by
feelings of interest, excitement, inspiration, enthusiasm and activity; negative
affect refers to an affective disposition that encompasses unpleasant emotions such
as sadness and is often assessed by subjective distress incorporating anger, fear,
guilt and nervousness (Wilson, et al., 1998).
Considering the similarities in definition and measurement, and the high
correlations between extroversion and positive affect, and neuroticism and
negative affect, it is possible that the personality and affect constructs are
measuring similar things. In fact, some authors have concluded that the constructs
are interchangeable (Fogarty, et al., 1999) or indistinguishable (Fujita, 1993). This
10
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
casts some doubt on whether positive and negative affect should be considered an
outcome variable along with life satisfaction, or a predictive variable such as
personality. Hence, investigating the relationship between positive and negative
affect and life satisfaction is similar to investigating the relationship between
extroversion and neuroticism and life satisfaction. The correlations reported in the
literature between life satisfaction and positive affect range from .23 to .52, and
life satisfaction and negative affect range from -.36 to -.48 (Brief, Butcher, George
& Link, 1993; Cooper, Okamura & Gurka, 1992; Friedman, 1993; Lucas, Diener
& Suh, 1996). Similar ranges to those between extroversion and neuroticism and
subjective well-being.
In conclusion, it is clear that personality is strongly linked to subjective
judgements about quality of life and, because personality is an enduring
characteristic and subjective quality of life is more variable, it is likely this role is
a predictive one. Furthermore, one approach to simplifying research in this area is
to avoid the complicated positive and negative affect component of the subjective
well-being construct, so that the relationship between personality and subjective
quality of life or life satisfaction can be more clearly understood.
1.2.3 The relationships between personality and other psychological processes that may impact on subjective quality of lifeThe literature in this field introduces numerous psychological processes
that may be involved with subjective quality of life. For example, McQuillen,
Licht and Licht (2001) found that identity structure predicted life satisfaction.
Identity structure refers to the hierarchical ordering of the multiple aspects of one's
self-concept (eg husband is a higher level aspect than friend or athlete as the
former encompasses the later). In another example, Pavot, Fujita and Diener
(1997) found that self-aspect congruence, that is congruence between ideal and
real self, was positively correlated with subjective well-being. However,
congruence was negatively correlated with neuroticism and when the effects of
neuroticism were controlled for, self-aspect congruence did not reliably predict
subjective well-being. This finding highlights the importance of identifying
psychological processes that make a unique contribution to the variance in
subjective quality of life after the effects of personality are removed.
11
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
A similar psychological process that has received much attention in the
literature is satisfaction with self, which is considered to be a major predictor of
life satisfaction (Campbell, 1981; Argyle & Lu, 1990; Diener & Diener, 1995).
However, investigating the relationship between how satisfied people are with
themselves (self-satisfaction) and how satisfied they are with their life (life
satisfaction) is problematic, considering the great deal of overlap between the two
‘satisfaction’ constructs. More information may be provided by reducing the
global self-satisfaction construct and investigating three aspects of self-
satisfaction, which are self-esteem, optimism and control (Cummins & Nistico, in
press).
Self-esteem refers to a sense of self-worth or value, and this construct has
been found to have a strong positive correlation with life satisfaction (Boschen,
1996; Hong & Giannakopoulos, 1994; Kwan, Bond & Singelis, 1997; Lucas, et al.,
1996). In fact, in some studies the correlation has been so high that Lucas, et al.
(1996) tested whether the two constructs were discriminable from each other, and
found that they were. Kwan, et al. (1997) agree, and suggest that self-esteem is a
useful mediator of the variance in life satisfaction attributed to personality.
However, self-esteem is one of the traits that inversely contribute to neuroticism
(Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985); and the two constructs correlate highly in student
samples in both the U.S. (-.69) and Hong Kong (-.63) (Kwan, et al., 1997). Hence,
it is likely that if the effects of neuroticism were controlled for, self-esteem may
not make a unique contribution to the variance in subjective quality of life.
Optimism refers to a sense of positivity about the future and there is some
evidence for a positive relationship between optimism and life satisfaction
(Christensen, Parris-Stephens & Townsend, 1998; Lucas, et al., 1996). As with
self-esteem, Lucas et al. (1996) tested whether the two constructs were
discriminable and found that they were. However, optimism has also been found
to correlate highly with neuroticism by Smith, Pope, Rhodewalt and Poulton,
(1989), who conclude that it is difficult to distinguish between optimism, measured
with the Life Orientation Test, from measures of neuroticism and negative
affectivity. Hence, it is again likely that if the effects of neuroticism were
12
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
controlled for, optimism may not make a unique contribution to the variance in
subjective life quality.
Finally, control conventionally refers to a sense that one can change the
environment in accordance with one’s wishes (this definition will be elaborated
later) and this construct has also been found to correlate with life-satisfaction,
although generally not as strongly as self-esteem (Boschen, 1996; Christensen, et
al., 1998; Schulz & Decker, 1985). There is generally little research in the
literature on the association between control and the personality dimensions,
extroversion and neuroticism. Still, some studies have shown control correlates
positively with extroversion and negatively with neuroticism (Darvill & Johnson,
1991; Morrison, 1997). Although the extent of these relationships is highly
variable and likely dependent on the definition and measurement of control used.
This issue clearly needs further investigation to identify whether or not control is a
psychological process that makes a unique contribution to the variance in
subjective quality of life. Furthermore, much of the literature on control and life
satisfaction is based on populations with spinal injury (eg. Boschen, 1990;
Boschen, 1996) and there is a need for investigation of normal populations to
assess whether control plays a role in life satisfaction in the absence of obvious
losses of control.
1.2.4 Conclusion There is both theoretical and empirical support for the notion that
personality, primarily extroversion and neuroticism, predicts subjective quality of
life. There is also theoretical and empirical support for the notion that other
psychological processes may have a strong association with subjective quality of
life. Yet, it is not clear whether these processes would make a unique contribution
to subjective quality of life if the effects of personality were controlled for. In fact,
similar to self-aspect congruence, it is likely that self-esteem and optimism will not
make a unique contribution. As the relationship between personality and
perceived control is not well documented and its ability to make a unique
contribution to subjective quality of life unknown, it is the most compelling of
these processes for investigation.
13
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
1.3 PERCEIVED CONTROL
1.3.1 IntroductionA diverse literature suggests a sense of control is important to well-being.
Such perceptions of control are defined as “the judgements we each make about
the extent to which we can achieve desired outcomes and protect ourselves from
the misfortunes of life” (Thompson et al., 1998, p. 584). When making these
judgements, individuals will assess and use the control strategies they consider
available to them. These control strategies are divided into two processes of
perceived control, termed primary and secondary, by Rothbaum, Weisz and
Snyder (1982). This two-process model of perceived control provides a basic
understanding of the underlying structure of many terms and concepts in the
control and coping literature, such as behavioural and cognitive control (see
Thompson, 1981), emotion-focused and problem-focused coping (see Folkman,
1984) and learned helplessness (see Rothbaum, et al., 1982).
In fact, it was inadequacies in ideas about uncontrollability in the learned
helplessness and locus of control literature that motivated Rothbaum, et al. (1982)
to conceptualise two processes of control. They felt that this literature
inappropriately considers inward behaviours such as passivity, withdrawal and
submissiveness as a result of perceptions of uncontrollability and argued that:
the motivation to feel in control may be expressed not only in behaviour that is
blatantly controlling but also, subtly, in behaviour that is not. In some cases inward
behaviour may reflect a relinquishing of the powerful motive for perceived control.
In other cases, however, such behaviour may be initiated and maintained in an effort
to sustain perceptions of control. This effort is particularly likely when the inward
behaviour helps prevent disappointment, when it leads to a perception of alignment
with forces such as chance or powerful others, and when it is accompanied by
attempts to derive meaning from a situation. The uncontrollability model does not
explain any of these phenomena. (p. 9)
What these authors suggest is that an individual may exercise control over an event
not only by manipulating the external environment, but also by manipulating their
own internal environment; a perception of control that had gone largely ignored in
the literature. This is exampled by the earlier definitions of control that focus on
‘changing events’ (Brickman et al., 1982) or ‘behaviours’ (Glass & Carver, 1980)
14
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
and give little consideration of the role that cognitions play in control. When
cognitions are acknowledged it becomes evident that passivity, withdrawal and
submissiveness may in some circumstances be effective responses that serve to
maintain a perception of control and do not necessarily reflect perceived
uncontrollability as is suggested by the learned helplessness literature.
1.3.2 Developing a definition of primary and secondary controlTo include cognitions into the concept of control, Rothbaum, et al. (1982)
introduced the concept of primary and secondary control. Primary control is
defined as “attempts to change the world to fit in with the self’s needs”
(Rothbaum, et al., 1982, p. 8). Secondary control is defined as “attempts to fit in
with the world and to ‘flow with the current’” (Rothbaum, et al., 1982, p. 8). Both
primary control and secondary control may involve behaviours and cognitions.
However, typically primary control is characterised by behaviour which engages
the external world, and secondary control is characterised by cognitions within the
individual (Schulz & Heckhausen, 1996). Although these definitions are vague,
especially that of secondary control, the concepts are sound and subsequent
literature has provided clearer definitions. For example, Heckhausen and Schulz
(1995) have used the primary and secondary control concepts in a life span theory
of control. These authors defined primary and secondary control by the target of
the control. Primary control is defined as “bringing the environment into line with
one’s wishes … targets the external world and attempts to achieve effects in the
immediate environment external to the individual” (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995,
p. 286). Secondary control is defined as “bringing the self in line with the
environment … targets the self and attempts to bring changes directly within the
individual” (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995, p. 286).
Primary and Secondary control can be further understood by considering
some examples. In attempting to maintain a perception of control an individual
may use primary control strategies, such as asking others for help or advice,
developing new skills to deal with the situation, or working hard and investing
time into the situation. In attempting to maintain a perception of control an
individual may also use secondary control strategies, such as downward social
15
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
comparison (remembering one is better off than others), positive re-interpretation
(considering that something good will come of it) and active avoidance (ignoring
the event by thinking about other things). The above quotation from Rothbaum, et
al. (1982) provides examples of three other secondary control strategies: illusory
control (associating with chance), vicarious control (associating with powerful
others) and interpretive control (deriving meaning from the event).
Perceived control and the primary and secondary control processes that
form this perception are fundamental to coping with difficult circumstances.
Authors from the coping literature suggest that perceived control is necessary so
that the individual is assured a situation will not become so formidable that it
cannot be endured (see Thompson, 1981). Hence, Thompson (1981) defines
control as “the belief that one has at one’s disposal a response that can influence
the aversiveness of an event” (p. 89). This conceptualisation of control is related
to the compensatory function of primary and secondary control that Heckhausen
and Schulz (1995), and Schulz and Heckhausen (1996), promote in their life-span
theory of control. What these authors suggest is that an individual uses primary
and secondary control strategies to compensate for failure experiences. These
failure experiences include: “(a) normative developmental failure experiences
encountered when individuals attempt to enlarge their competencies, (b)
developmental declines characteristic of late life, and (c) non-normative or random
negative events” (Schulz & Heckhausen, 1996, p. 710). Furthermore, these
compensation mechanisms serve to “maintain, enhance and remediate
competencies and motivational resources” that are necessary for successful
experiences (Schulz & Heckhausen, 1996, p. 710). Hence, primary and secondary
control processes are used to cope with negative experiences or aversive
circumstances, and function to maintain a perception of control that will serve to
sustain competencies and motivation. Therefore, perceived control can be likened
to coping when considered in response to difficult circumstances.
However, perceived control also works in a way that makes it different
from coping. Primary and secondary control also have a selective function, where
they serve to assist goal selection and channel resources into the selected goals
(Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995). This selection concept taps into the notion that
16
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
primary and secondary control processes are not used exclusively in response to
aversive circumstances. In more subtle ways primary and secondary control may
be used to maintain perceived control in the more general negotiation of the
environment, to maintain a person-environment fit. Yet, the distinction between
selection and compensation is difficult to support as goal selection and resource
allocation can also be immediate responses to failure and have a compensatory
role. In fact, the notion that primary and secondary control strategies may be used
to achieve a person-environment fit encompasses both those circumstances where
strategies are used in response to a negative circumstance and where they are
simply a part of the general negotiation of the environment.
A more operational definition of control would involve a number of these
concepts and definitions. By using Thompson’s (1981) idea that control is a
‘belief’, control is restricted to the realm of perception. By using Heckhausen and
Schulz’s (1995) idea that a definition of primary and secondary control should
focus on the target of control, the distinction between the two types of control is
clearer. By including the aim of control, as person-environment fit, a better
understanding of the concept is provided. Hence, primary control may be referred
to as ‘the belief that one has at one’s disposal a response that can change the
external environment to achieve a person-environment fit’ and secondary control
may be referred to as ‘the belief that one has a one’s disposal a response that can
change the internal environment to achieve a person-environment fit’.
1.3.3 Addressing the interaction between primary and secondary controlPerson-environment fit can be likened to the term ‘optimal adaptation’ that
Rothbaum, et al. (1982) use to describe the successful coordination of the
intertwined primary and secondary control processes. Alternatively, Heckhausen
and Schulz (1995) conceive the relationship between primary and secondary
control not as two intertwined processes but as one, where primary control has
functional primacy over secondary control. They argue that:
Because primary control is directed outward, it enables individuals to shape their
environment to fit their particular needs and developmental potential. Without
engaging the external world, the developmental potential of the organism cannot be
realised. As a result, it is both preferred and has greater adaptive value to the
17
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
individual. … (Hence,) the major function of secondary control is to minimise
losses in, maintain, and expand existing levels of primary control.
(Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995, p. 286)
There are, however, problems associated with this view of primary and secondary
control processes. Just as the learned helplessness theories ignore the adaptive
value of cognitions (Rothbaum, et al., 1982), this theory excludes the adaptive
value of secondary control in and of itself. It is conceivable that individuals need
to shape both themselves and their environment to fit their particular needs and
developmental potential, and that without engaging both the internal and external
worlds their developmental potential cannot be realised.
Moreover, the adaptive value and preference for primary control over
secondary control is likely to be restricted to specific circumstances. For example
age, culture and ethnicity provide circumstances in which primary control does not
necessarily have primacy over secondary control. Heckhausen and Schulz (1996)
point out themselves that after the age of fifty the availability and use of secondary
control strategies is greater than that of primary control strategies, and that
successful aging is dependent on utilising secondary control strategies.
Furthermore, the importance of changing the external environment is bound to
Western cultures. Eastern cultures are likely to place more emphasis on accepting
the external environment and relying on control strategies that change the internal
environment. (Weiz, Rothbaum & Blackburn, 1984). Like culture, studies on
ethnicity have shown that primary control does not necessarily have primacy over
secondary control. African American HIV-positive male state prison inmates did
not show the same association between primary control and decreased distress that
white inmates showed. Furthermore, secondary control did not function as a back-
up to primary control regardless of ethnicity (Thompson, Collins, Newcomb &
Hunt, 1996). Thus, in some life stages, cultures and ethnic backgrounds,
secondary control processes may be more adaptive and preferred than primary
control processes.
Additionally, it is likely that there are other factors that may influence
whether primary or secondary control is preferred. Personality may be one such
factor. It is conceivable that some individuals may possess enduring
18
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
characteristics or predispositions that promote their reliance on primary control
over secondary and visa versa. Not all individuals will have the intrinsic
motivation to always change the environment to achieve a perception of control.
Some will be more resigned to accept their environment and change themselves to
fit within it. The extroversion and neuroticism dimensions of personality may
provide some insight into this hypothesis. For example, Alloy, Abramson and
Viscusi (1981) found that negative moods reduce feelings of control. Considering
the strong relationship between negative affect and neuroticism, it is possible that
this personality dimension will also influence an individual’s perception of control.
Likewise, positive affect or extroversion may also influence an individual’s
perception of control. However, at this stage, such speculation requires empirical
support.
In summary, there is good argument and evidence to suggest that primary
control does not necessarily have functional primacy over secondary control. It
may therefore be more useful to consider primary and secondary control as two
complimentary processes where, in given individuals, circumstances, and
environments, one process may be preferred and have greater adaptive value over
the other, and that each process may serve to compliment the other to maintain
perceived control.
This complimentary interaction between primary and secondary control
cannot be considered without acknowledging a third process in perceptions of
control, that is, a loss of control. While secondary control does replace much of
what was traditionally thought of as perceptions of uncontrollability, the
perception of uncontrollability still exists, although it is not always given attention
in the literature on primary and secondary control. In fact, there are large
segments of society that are at special risk for low feelings of control (Thompson
& Spacapan, 1991). When primary or secondary control is perceived not to be
available, an individual may relinquish control. That is, they may perceive the
event as uncontrollable and abandon the motivation for control (Rothbaum, et al.,
1982). Relinquished control is manifested in passivity and helplessness (Skinner,
1996). Examples of relinquished control are where an individual may respond to
an event or circumstance by not doing anything, spending time by his/her-self , or
19
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
letting feelings out, maybe by crying or yelling (Thurber & Weisz, 1997). Hence,
primary, secondary and relinquished control are important constructs to consider in
developing an understanding of perceived control.
Overall, there is a sense that primary and secondary control are closely
intertwined and the use of one over the other to achieve a person-environment fit
may be dependent upon a number of factors. Furthermore, some individuals may
not have the motivation to use primary or secondary control to achieve a person-
environment fit and may relinquish control altogether, experiencing a period of
perceived uncontrollability and person-environment misfit. Hence, an individual’s
perceived control may be maintained by a fluid combination of primary, secondary
and relinquished control processes.
1.3.4 The literature on primary, secondary and relinquished control, and various indicators of well-beingThe literature on primary and secondary control has followed two paths.
There is literature, stimulated by Heckhausen and Schulz (1995), which identifies
primary and secondary control processes in theories of life span development and
there is literature that identifies primary and secondary control processes as useful
strategies for coping with stressful or aversive situations or events. It is in this
latter path that I am mostly interested.
There are a number of studies by Weisz and collegues that focus on
children’s coping using primary, secondary and relinquished control strategies.
For example, research has shown that children cope with everyday stress by using
primary and secondary control processes (Band & Weisz, 1988). Research has
also shown that when children are in stressful situations in which few primary
control strategies may be available to them, secondary control is an adaptive
coping mechanism. For example, children undergoing treatment for leukemia
showed better adjustment if they used secondary control strategies than primary or
relinquished control strategies (Weisz, McCabe & Dennig, 1994); children at
summer camp showed the most frequent and effective way to cope with
homesickness was to use secondary control strategies (Thurber & Weisz, 1997).
These findings are congruent with the notion that secondary control is commonly
20
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
used after primary control has failed or, in this case, when it is not available.
However, this conclusion has not been supported with adults. For example,
Burton and Sistler (1996) found that spousal caregivers of people with dementia
used a combination of primary and secondary control in stressful situations.
Overall, the evidence shows that primary, secondary and relinquished control
strategies are used in aversive or stressful situations.
A broader range of literature shows that an individual’s perception of
control is likely to have a significant impact on their subjective life quality. It has
been proposed that both primary and secondary control processes are required to
maintain a perception of control that is necessary for optimal adaptation
(Rothbaum, et al., 1982), successful development (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995),
to feel confident that a situation will not become so aversive it cannot be endured
(Thompson, 1981), and to achieve a sense of person-environment fit. Thompson
and Spacapan (1991) highlight evidence that suggests perceived control: 1) is
essential to emotional well-being, 2) can reduce the stress associated with stressful
events or situations, 3) contributes to adaptive coping with life stressors, 4) is
associated with better health outcomes, 5) promotes better ability to change
behaviours, and 6) can lead to improved performance. More specifically, Weisz,
Thurber, Sweeney, Proffitt and LeGagnoux (1997) found significant decreases in
the symptomatology of children with mild to moderate depressive symptoms when
treated with an 8-session primary and secondary control enhancement training
program. Also, as highlighted earlier, control has been found to correlate with life
satisfaction (Boschen, 1996; Christensen, et al., 1998; Schulz & Decker, 1985).
Considering this, the relationship between perceived control and subjective quality
of life is likely to be significant.
1.3.5 The measurement of primary, secondary and relinquished controlSince the development of the concepts of primary and secondary control is
relatively recent, there is no widely accepted tool for their measurement. Some
researchers (eg. Band & Weisz, 1988; Burton and Sistler, 1996; Thompson et al.,
1996; Weisz et al., 1994) have measured primary and secondary control by
obtaining responses about how difficult situations were coped with, and coding
21
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
these responses as reflecting either primary or secondary control, and sometimes
relinquished control. The coding system is based on the Rothbaum et al., (1982)
model of primary and secondary control (Weisz et al., 1994). In general, primary
control coping responses are those that involve attempts to directly interact with
the environment so as to modify objective circumstances. Secondary control
coping responses are those involving primarily internal responses aimed at
attempting to adjust oneself (eg. one’s beliefs, hopes, goal interpretations,
attributions) to objective circumstances. Finally, relinquished control consists of
the absence of attempts at primary or secondary control (eg. giving up or
concluding that there is nothing I can do). Thurber and Weisz (1997) have applied
this coding method to an already established coping scale for children. This
method of coding coping responses into primary and secondary control has been
effective and allows for various sample populations to provide responses that are
relevant to their own experiences. However, this also limits the generalisability of
the results and the comparison of results from different samples. Furthermore,
there may be coding biases, especially as some responses may contain elements of
both primary and secondary control making them more difficult to categorise.
A more systematic tool for the measurement of primary and secondary
control has been developed Heeps (2000). This questionnaire asks respondents to
rate the degree to which they agree with statements that reflect either primary or
secondary control. For example, “When I fail to meet a goal: I look for different
ways to achieve the goal” (primary control), “When something bad happens that I
cannot change, I can see that something good will come of it” (secondary control).
The statements were developed by reviewing the variety of types of primary and
secondary control described in the current literature. A total of seven primary
control items and seventeen secondary control items were developed. This tool is
still in the early stages of development and requires further validation and
assessment of reliability. Furthermore, the tool does not include any relinquished
control items.
Relinquished control has been measured by Thurber and Weisz (1997),
who developed the Ways of Coping with Homesickness Questionnaire by taking a
well-established questionnaire and coding the items in terms of primary, secondary
22
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
and relinquished control. The items on relinquished control included “I spent time
by myself”, “I just let my feelings out, maybe by crying or yelling”, and “I didn’t
do anything. Nothing would have helped”. While these items were used with
children, their content seems appropriate for the measurement of relinquished
control in adults.
1.3.6 Conclusion There is substantial theory and empirical evidence to suggest that perceived
control may be directly associated with subjective quality of life. Primary and
secondary control processes provide a contemporary conceptualisation of
perceived control that has received increasing support in the literature. With the
addition of relinquished control there are three control processes that interact with
each other to form a perception of control that may impact on an individual’s
subjective quality of life.
1.4 INTEGRATING PERSONALITY, PERCEIVED CONTROL AND SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE
1.4.1 Maintaining subjective quality of lifeThe importance of understanding the psychological processes involved
with making judgements of life quality is highlighted by the recent proposition that
subjective quality of life is held under some kind of homeostatic control
(Cummins, 1995, 1998, 2000). This proposition is based on meta-analytic
research that has shown life satisfaction data to be consistent both between and
within Western populations. The research has converted life satisfaction data from
numerous studies to a percentage of scale maximum (%SM), which expresses any
Likert scale value as though it had been scored on a scale measured over the range
0 to 100. In examining the distribution of data both between and within various
Western populations, it has been consistently found that life satisfaction was
negatively skewed and clustered around three quarters of the scale maximum. It
was concluded that the average life satisfaction mean score of Western populations
is 75 2.5%SM, and that this average is held under homeostatic control.
23
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
Further support for the homeostatic model has been found by analysing the
changing relationship between population means and variance across 62 studies on
both Western and non-Western populations (Cummins, 2000). It was found that as
means approach 70%SM, the distribution becomes increasingly leptokurtic, and
therefore has lower variance. Then as the population mean values drop below
70%SM, the distribution become increasingly platykurtic as their ranges extend
downward, with a consequential increase in variance. These observations were
used to reinforce the conclusion that life satisfaction is not free to vary over its
theoretical range of 0-100%SM, but is held under homeostatic control which
attempts to maintain the life satisfaction of populations above 70%SM.
This homeostatic model compels us to question further how subjective
quality of life is maintained above 70%SM. Cummins and Nistico, (in press)
suggest that positively biased cognitions regarding aspects of the self may
constitute an adaptive mechanism that maintains life satisfaction. The aspects of
the self that the authors refer to are self-esteem, optimism and control. Cognitive
biases are beliefs based in reality but with a positive bias in favour of the
individual, as opposed to delusions that are incongruent with reality. Positive
cognitive biases have two essential properties. They are non-specific, in that they
refer to nebulous ideas that cannot readily be discerned from reality, and they are
empirically unfalsifiable as there is a lack of objective referents with which to
compare nebulous personal qualities. Despite the difficulties in empirically
validating positive cognitive biases, there is evidence to suggest that they exist in
direct relation to enhancing the self, enhancing one’s perception of control and
keeping optimistic about the future (see Taylor & Brown, 1988) and that they
contribute to life satisfaction (Cummins & Nistico, in press). Hence, perceived
control is indicated as an important psychological process involved in maintaining
subjective quality of life.
When trying to understand how subjective quality of life is maintained,
personality must also be considered, given that it has been consistently shown to
correlate strongly with various indicators of life quality. The literature has
demonstrated that the two personality dimensions, extroversion and neuroticism,
can predict subjective well-being across time and various situations. Hence, the
24
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
same predictive relationship is expected of personality and subjective quality of
life. By definition, personality is an enduring characteristic or predisposition and
it is this quality that may contribute to the maintenance of subjective quality of
life. More specifically, it is an individual’s enduring qualities of sociability and
positive affect (ie. extroversion) and the absence of emotional instability and
negative affect (ie. neuroticism) that maintain subjective quality of life.
Furthermore, it is likely that these enduring personality characteristics will also
impact on other psychological processes found to maintain life satisfaction, such
as perceived control. The prediction of subjective quality of life by personality
and perceived control may occur in either of two ways. Personality may indirectly
predict subjective quality of life via perceived control (see Figure 1a), or
personality may continue to directly predict subjective quality of life in addition to
an indirect prediction through perceived control (see Figure 1b). Given the
strength of the relationship between personality and subjective quality of life, I
propose the latter model to be more accurate.
1(a) Indirect prediction 1(b) Direct and indirect prediction
Figure 1: The direct and indirect prediction of subjective quality of life (SQOL)
by personality and perceived control.
1.4.2 Rationale for a hypothesised model of personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life
The three concepts, personality, perceived control and subjective quality of
life, depicted in Figure 1, have been selected for investigation for a number of
reasons.
25
Personality
Perceived Control
SQOL
Perceived Control
SQOL
Personality
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
Firstly, the definition and measurement of each of these concepts is sound.
Subjective quality of life is a concept free from the problems surrounding
subjective well-being which incorporates the problematic conceptualisation and
measurement of positive and negative affect. Furthermore, the definition and
measurement of subjective quality of life has been soundly developed by Cummins
(1997a, 1997b) and incorporates the notion that judgements of satisfaction with
life domains are weighted by the importance of that particular life domain to the
individual. Extroversion and neuroticism are well known dimensions of
personality that have long been upheld in the literature in both theory and
measurement. Perceived control formed by the interaction of primary, secondary
and relinquished control processes is a relatively recent conceptualisation, but it
has gained impressive theoretical support and provides a basic understanding of
the underlying structure of many terms and concepts in the wider control literature.
The measurement of primary, secondary and relinquished control is, however, in
the process of development.
Secondly, the definition and measurement of these three constructs allows
for their relationships to be explored without running the risk of including
constructs that are in essence identifying the same phenomena. This problem is
likely to be inherent in investigations of the relationship between personality and
two of the three dimensions of self-satisfaction, self-esteem and optimism, where
there is a strong association between neuroticism and these two dimensions.
Hence, subjective quality of life, the personality dimensions of extroversion and
neuroticism, and the self-satisfaction dimension of perceived control and the
primary, secondary and relinquished control processes associated with it, are ideal
variables for the current investigation, as they are likely to be relatively free from
confounding overlapping variance.
Finally, there is theory and evidence to suggest that the relationships
between these three concepts are meaningful and contribute to the maintenance of
life satisfaction. Personality has long been established to predict constructs of life
quality. Perceived control has been more recently introduced as an important
factor in the maintenance of life satisfaction. It is hypothesised that personality
26
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
will play a dual role in influencing subjective quality of life both directly and
indirectly through impacting on perceived control (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Hypothesised model of subjective quality of life, personality and
perceived control.
1.4.3 Focus of the current researchThe current study will examine the hypothesised model of relationships,
depicted in Figure 2, between the personality dimensions of extroversion and
neuroticism, perceived control and the associated processes of primary, secondary
and relinquished control and subjective quality of life. The model will be tested on
a general population as well as a population of people caring for a relative with a
mental illness.
27
Subjective Quality of
Life
Perceived Control
Personality
Extroversion Neuroticism
Primary Control
Secondary Control
Relinquished Control
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
1.5 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE: CARERS OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS
1.5.1 The historical development of research into carers of people with mental illnessThe process of deinstitutionalisation and the introduction of community
focused psychiatric care has placed increasing responsibility on families for the
care of people with psychiatric disabilities. In response to this, research on people
with a psychiatric disability began to include their families. Initially the research
focused on the negative impact the family had on the person with mental illness
leading to families being viewed as the cause of mental illness throughout the
1960’s and 1970’s (Yamashita & McNally-Forsyth, 1998).
In an example of this negative view, Brown, Birley and Wing (1972) refer
to the following ‘facts’ about the course of Schizophrenia: close emotional ties
with family members indicated poor prognosis; patients discharged from hospital
to live with family members who were highly emotionally involved with them
were more likely to suffer a relapse; a raised level of tension in the home made
relapse more likely. With these ‘facts’ about the negative impact of families on
people with mental illness in mind, the authors then go on to investigate the
relationship between family members' expressed emotion and patient relapse.
Expressed emotion was measured by hostility, dissatisfaction, warmth, emotional
over-involvement and the number of critical comments. Patient relapse was
measured by either, a change from normal to a state of schizophrenia, or a marked
exacerbation of persistent schizophrenic symptoms. The authors found that
expressed emotion was independently associated with relapse and could not be
explained away by the action of any other factor investigated such as age, sex,
previous occupational record, length of clinical history, type of illness, etc.
Concluding, “the level of relatives’ expressed emotion must be taken into account
as one of the factors that cause relapse” (Brown, et al., 1972, p. 254).
While such conclusions did receive some empirical support (such as
Vaughn & Leff, 1976), the adoption of these conclusions by clinicians by far
outweighed that which would be warranted by the empirical evidence. The
research was largely atheoretical, and while the association between high
28
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
expressed emotion and relapse was clearly established, causality was not.
Furthermore, there were methodological problems; the most measurable
component of expressed emotion was the number of critical comments made by
the family member about the patient (Brown, et al., 1972). It is possible that
family members have more to be critical about with patients who are not fully
recovered and who are therefore more likely to relapse. It is also possible that
family members perceived the research interviews as an opportunity to express the
problems they perceived in their mentally ill relative.
The notion that families were the causative agents in the development of
mental illness inspired a body of research that investigated the impact that mental
illness had on the family. Advocacy groups for families of people with a mental
illness argued that this high expressed emotion was a direct response to the trauma
of caring for a mentally ill relative. This trauma began to be investigated by
researchers who referred to it as the ‘burden’ of care, and distinctions were made
between objective and subjective burden; objective burden refers to the tangible or
observable costs to the family and subjective burden refers to the personal
suffering or negative psychological impact on the family member (Maurin &
Boyd, 1990; Lefley, 1987a; Webb et al., 1998). Whilst these two concepts are
closely associated, as objective burden is likely to contribute to subjective burden,
it is the literature on subjective burden that is most relevant to subjective quality of
life.
1.5.2 The impact of the caregiving role on subjective quality of life A number of literature reviews have concluded that mental illness produces
significant burden and distress in family members (eg. Fadden, Bebbington &
Kuipers, 1987; Maurin & Boyd, 1990). The psychological distress of carers, as
measured with the General Health Questionnaire is reported to be high. It was
reported by Vaddadi, Soosai, Gilleard and Adlard (1997) that 79% of carers had
scores indicating a significant level of emotional/psychiatric disorder. Whilst,
Barrowclough and Parle (1997) found 57% of carers had significant levels of
psychological distress at the time of the patient’s hospital admission and that in
30% of carers this distress remained when the patient was discharged back home.
29
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
In a review of the literature by Cummins (2001) on carers of people with a range
of severe disabilities, all of the 17 studies analysed reported higher than normal
levels of distress in carers. A key theme in these studies was higher than normal
levels of anxiety and depression.
The emotional impact of caring for people with mental illness has also
been reported descriptively. In a qualitative study conducted in Iceland,
Sveinbjarnardottir and Dierckx de Casterle, (1997) found that family members
expressed a wide range of emotionally painful and disturbing feelings such as
anger, disappointment, fatigue, distress, anxiety and sadness, all of which they
found overwhelming at times. Lefley (1987b) adds bewilderment, fear, denial,
rage, self-blame, pain, sorrow, empathic suffering and grieving to this list.
Moreover, the introduction of mental illness into the family has been described as
a traumatic and catastrophic event which primarily gives rise to a powerful
grieving process (Baxter & Diehl, 1998; Collings & Seminuik, 1998; Fadden et al.,
1987; Lefley, 1987b; Marsh et al., 1996; Winefield, 1998). Family members often
experience feelings of grief over the loss of the former personality and the future
potential of the individual with mental illness. Along with this grief often comes a
significant sense of guilt or self-blame. There are four types of guilt frequently
described: 1) guilt associated with the belief that they may have done something to
cause the mental illness or that they did not recognised the symptoms and seek
help early enough, 2) guilt about having hostile feelings toward the person with the
mental illness, even though such feelings may be a legitimate response to
provocative or intolerable behaviour, 3) guilt about leaving a loved one in
unpleasant surrounds, such as when the person must stay in hospital or other
residential services, and 4) guilt about making self-protective life decisions, such
as deciding not to care for the person in the family home (Lefley, 1987b).
Clearly the emotional impact of caring for someone with a mental illness is
great. So great in fact that many carers experience clinically significant levels of
psychological distress, primarily anxiety and depression, as well as a more
descriptive range of emotional experiences. There are a variety of elements
associated with caregiving that may be a source of this burden and distress.
30
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
The burden and distress of caregiving often occurs in the context of
permanent shifts in family roles and considerable unanticipated responsibility
falling consistently to one carer (Perring, Twigg & Atkin, 1990). It is this
individual who often finds themself in a position where the needs and wishes of
the person with mental illness are constantly put before the needs of the primary
caregiver and other family members (Maurin & Boyd, 1990; Webb et al., 1998).
This individual may also feel isolated as they try to cope with the impact of mental
illness in the family. In fact social isolation has been found to be widespread
among families affected by mental illness. Fadden et al., (1987) suggest “one of
the most damaging consequences of living with a relative with a persistent mental
illness is the detriment to social and leisure activities” (p. 286). A huge amount of
time is taken up by the caring role and carers often find it difficult to leave the
house unattended for longer than a few hours at a time (Perring et al., 1990). This
makes time for the pursuit of social, leisure and employment activities difficult to
find, resulting in increased social isolation. Social isolation may also be a result of
the stigma of mental illness (Fadden et al., 1987) and discrimination against
individuals with mental illness (Sveinbjarnardottir & Dierckx de Casterle, 1997).
The now somewhat historical notion that families are causative agents in the
development of mental illness and schizophrenia has left in its wake a stigma that
still remains (Ferris & Marshall, 1987). Many families still experience this stigma
in their interactions with mental health professionals, encountering a lack of
recognition or appreciation from professionals, and this can be the source of a
great deal of stress for family members (Winefield, 1998).
Along with these more general problems, carers must cope with the
relapsing and remitting nature of mental illness and difficult symptom behaviours.
The unpredictability of the episodic characteristics of mental illness are reported to
be the most difficult aspect of living with someone with such a condition
(Sveinbjarnardottir & Dierckx de Casterle, 1997), as the carer is required to
constantly readjust the caring role in response to this unpredictability (Collings &
Seminuik, 1998). Difficult symptom behaviours include both positive and
negative symptoms. Positive symptoms reflect an excess or distortion of normal
functions, such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech or disorganised
behaviour (American Psychological Association, 1994). Negative symptoms
31
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
reflect a diminution or loss of normal functions, such as affective flattening and
avolition (American Psychological Association, 1994). Researchers have found
mixed results for the role these symptom types play in contributing to carer
burden. Webb et al. (1998) cite research that has found positive symptoms to
contribute to burden (eg. Winefield & Harvey, 1993) and others that have found
negative symptoms to be most burdensome (eg. Oldridge & Hughes, 1992).
Positive symptoms often result in problematic psychotic and socially
unacceptable behaviours. When families are not able to manage these behaviours,
the quality of life for all family members declines as they experience
overwhelming tension in anticipation of the dreaded behaviours (Swan & Lavitt,
1988). When the individual with mental illness demonstrates these behaviours in
the community, it adds to the families sense of social stigma, embarrassment and
isolation (Lefley, 1987b). In addition, some individuals display a number of
threatening, intimidating and violent behaviours, with which the family carers
must deal. Caregiving families with violent members have reported significantly
lower adjustment scores than families with nonviolent members (Swan & Lavitt,
1988). Furthermore, Vaddadi et al., (1997) found the type and frequency of abuse
experienced positively correlated with relatives' General Health Questionnaire
scores, as did the number of types of abuse.
Negative symptoms also appear to be problematic for carers. In interviews
with 124 carers, Tucker, Barker and Gergoire (1998) found that depressed or
anxious behaviour in the mentally ill person accounted for 43% of the variance in
carers' negative scores on the Experience of Caregiving Inventory (Szmukler,
Wykes & Parkman, 1998). Furthermore, the resultant tension and anxiety that
carers experience in response to negative symptoms is sometimes intensified by
the fear that the individual with mental illness may commit suicide (Perring, et al.,
1990; Sveinbjarnardottir & Dierckx de Casterle, 1997).
Contrary to this research that suggests symptomatology and behaviour play
key roles in the burden experienced by carers, other researchers have found this
may not be the case. Szmukler et al., (1998) found that the ability of a wide range
of individual characteristics, including features of the illness, symptomatic state
32
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
and social functioning, to predict caregiver distress was poor. These authors
suggest that conflicting results have often resulted from an assessment of the
person’s symptomatology and behaviour using carer reports, rather than using
independent assessments. This may mean that it is carers’ perception of their ill
relatives’ disability, rather than actual disability, that impacts on their distress.
Alternatively, it may mean that carers have a more accurate picture of their ill
relatives’ disability. Still, the notion that carers’ perception of their ill relative’s
disability impacts on their distress provides an interesting avenue for reducing the
amount of distress carers experience.
Overall, it is clear that there are many negative elements associated with
the caregiving role which may have a negative impact on carers’ subjective quality
of life. In his review of the literature on carers of people with a range of severe
disabilities, Cummins (2001) converted life satisfaction scores from eight studies
into %SM and found the mean of the combined data was 615.9%SM, well below
the standard score of 752.5%SM. These studies investigated carers of
intellectually disabled children or adults and the elderly with dementia, yet from
the above discussion similar results would be expected of carers of people with
mental illness. Likewise, Browne and Bramston (1996) found that families of
young people with intellectual disabilities had significantly lower subjective
quality of life, particularly in the domains of health and productivity, than those
without offspring with an intellectual disability. Hence, the negative impact of
caregiving is likely to be evident regardless of the characteristics of the individuals
receiving the care.
It is also important to highlight the positives of caregiving, although little
work has been done on this area in the field of mental illness. Marsh et al. (1996)
researched evidence for resilience, which refers to “the ability to rebound from
adversity and prevail over the circumstances of our lives” (p. 4). The researchers
asked 131 close relatives of people with mental illness a series of open-ended
questions, which were coded to establish three variables: family resilience,
personal resilience and consumer resilience. Family resilience refers to family
bonds, family strengths and family growth. Personal resilience refers to personal
contributions, improved personal qualities and personal growth. Consumer
33
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
resilience refers to the person with mental illness and their positive personal
qualities, recovery, and contributions to the family. Family resilience was reported
by 87.8% of participants, personal resilience was reported by 99.2% and consumer
resilience by 75.6%. Unfortunately, the research provides no information on these
resilience factors in the normal population making interpretation of the findings
difficult. However, the research highlights the need to maximise resilience in
order to reduce carer burden and distress.
1.5.3 The role of perceived control in coping with the impact of mental illness on the family and maintaining subjective quality of lifeHow families respond and cope with the negative impact of mental illness
in the family is vital to identifying how subjective quality of life can be
maintained. Coping among carers of people with mental illness has recently
gained increased attention in the literature and the effectiveness of various coping
strategies in reducing burden and distress has been consistently found (for reviews
see Collings & Seminuik, 1998; Maurin & Boyd, 1990).
The theory of stress and coping developed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984)
has been advocated as a useful theory to apply to family burden (Maurin & Boyd,
1990). The Lazarus and Folkman (1984) model proposes that the negative effects
of stress on health are mediated by the person’s coping style and their cognitive
appraisals of the situation (primary appraisal) and of the resources available to
them (secondary appraisal). Coping styles are the characteristic strategies an
individual uses to handle stress. The model differentiates between two coping
styles: problem-focused coping (the process of managing the problem itself) and
emotion focused coping (the process of managing one’s emotions associated with
the problem). This theory is conceptually similar to the primary and secondary
processes of perceived control. Both theories address an individual’s perception of
his/her ability to deal with a situation and the strategies he/she uses in response to
the situation. Problem-focused coping is in many ways similar to primary control
where the problem is clearly being addressed by making changes in the person’s
environment. Emotion-focused coping has similarities with secondary control, as
managing one’s emotions is a process of making changes within the person’s
34
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
internal environment. Hence, primary and secondary control may be a useful way
of investigating how carers cope with the burden of caregiving.
In an investigation of families’ reactions to their relative’s mental illness,
by Yamashita and McNally-Forsyth (1998) who analysed qualitative data from
two studies (a Canadian and an American sample), four key themes were found to
demonstrate a developing sense of control within carers. Firstly, they found that a
primary task of family members was the acceptance of the mental illness
diagnosis. Family members reported that accepting mental illness, accepting the
uncertainty of the situation, understanding their relative’s behaviour as part of the
illness, and accepting the relative as he or she is, was a turning point in their
caregiving. Furthermore, it is apparent that telling their stories about the illness
and the relative’s symptoms, fostered this acceptance of the new reality of mental
illness and empowered them to move on with their lives. Secondly, they found
once families accepted the illness, they sought information about the illness from a
variety of sources. Some family members sought information in books; others
talked to knowledgable staff; some sought out other sources of information such as
physicians. Thirdly, further acceptance of the illness was signalled by the families'
attempt to maintain normalcy in their day to day living. Families indicated that
this was an important strategy for dealing with mental illness in the family.
Finally, the authors found that families realised how important it was to be open
and honest about their relatives’ condition to facilitate acceptance and normalcy.
In fact, families found that when they did relate to others in this way they were
surprised by the understanding and support they received. This process of
responding and coping with mental illness in the family outlined by Yamashita and
McNally-Forsyth (1998) demonstrates many primary and secondary control
strategies. The first theme, acceptance, is a secondary control process that appears
necessary to enable carers to use primary control processes, such as the second and
third themes, seeking information about mental illness and maintaining normalcy
in their daily lives. The fourth theme, being open and honest about mental illness
in the family is also a secondary control process that appears to foster further
primary (normalcy) and secondary (acceptance) control.
35
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
Similarly, Stern, Doolan, Staples, Szmukler and Eisler (1999) provide
evidence that carers use a range of primary and secondary control strategies, as
well as relinquished control, by evaluating narrative constructions about serious
mental illness in the family. These authors divided the narratives into two types,
those that provided stories of restitution or reparation and those that did not; the
latter they describe as being chaotic or frozen stories. The stories of restitution or
reparation involved a variety of primary and secondary control themes: making use
of resources like support groups (primary control), taking care of oneself (primary
control), seeing positives and being amused at times (secondary control; positive
re-interpretation) and viewing the mental illness as an occasion for learning and
knowing more in spite of the difficulties (secondary control; interpretive control).
The stories that were described as being chaotic or frozen involved themes of
relinquished control: difficulty making use of resources like support groups,
feeling flat and nebulous, hoping to get used to mental illness, and not knowing
what more to do or how to go about it.
These qualitative studies highlight the importance of both primary and
secondary control in coping with the impact of mental illness in the family. Yet,
research of a more quantitative nature has largely ignored secondary control
processes and focused only on themes of primary control. For example, in a
sample of 225 family members of persons with serious mental illness, Solomon
and Draine (1995) measured a wide array of adaptive coping strategies, which they
defined as “the application of behavioural strategies to reduce actual or potential
stress” (p. 1156). These adaptive coping strategies can be likened to primary
control, as behavioural strategies are most likely to achieve change in the person’s
external environment. The results found that social support, another form of
primary control, explained the largest portion of variance (17%) in adaptive
coping. More extensive adaptive coping was associated with membership in a
support group for families, a larger social network and more affirming support
from social network members. This indicates that primary control is an important
strategy for carers of people with mental illness. However, Webb et al. (1998) did
not find social support significantly related to subjective burden. In a study of 59
caregivers of patients with schizophrenia, these authors found that burden was
related to the inappropriate use of primary control. They found that burden was
36
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
increased in individuals who had a tendency to use problem-focused coping for
dealing with negative symptom behaviours and a tendency not to use problem-
focused coping for dealing with positive symptom behaviours. Hence, the
effectiveness of primary and secondary control may be dependent upon the
situation in which it is being applied. Furthermore, an individual’s personality or
tendency to use a particular type of control strategy may result in inappropriate
control strategies being used and thus hinder the effectiveness of the strategy.
1.5.4 ConclusionIn conclusion, it can be seen that the caregiving role may have a negative
impact on subjective quality of life. Carers of people with mental illness
experience considerable burden and distress. In fact, the introduction of mental
illness into the family has often been described as a traumatic and catastrophic
event that gives rise to an array of emotionally painful and disturbing feelings
including anger, guilt, anxiety, sadness and grief. As carers cope with difficult
symptom behaviours and the relapsing and remitting nature of mental illness, they
often find themselves in a position where the needs and wishes of the person with
mental illness are constantly put before their own. Consequently, carers’
opportunity for work may become limited and their social and leisure activities
reduced, which may lead to social isolation. The research on coping with this
negative impact of mental illness in the family indicates that both primary and
secondary control strategies may be useful in the maintenance of carers' subjective
quality of life.
1.5.5 Focus of the current researchThe current research intends to examine the impact of the caregiving role
on the subjective quality of life and perceived control of carers of people with
mental illness. These data will be compared with a comparison sample of people
who do not care for someone with a disability. In this comparison the effects of
personality on the variance in subjective quality of life will be removed to provide
a purer understanding of the differences between the two samples in their
satisfaction with life. The two samples will also be used to examine the
relationships, outlined in the model in Figure 2, between the variables of interest,
37
CHAPTER 1- Study One: Introduction
subjective quality of life, perceived control conceptualised as primary, secondary
and relinquished control strategies, and personality conceptualised as neuroticism
and extroversion.
38
CHAPTER 2 - Study One: Aims and Hypotheses
CHAPTER 2
2 STUDY ONE: AIMS AND HYPOTHESES
Aim One:
To develop a valid and reliable tool for the measurement of perceived
control by examining the factor structure of questionnaire items reported to reflect
primary control, secondary control and relinquished control.
Aim Two:
To examine the differences in perceived control and subjective quality of
life between a sample of carers of people with mental illness and a comparison
sample of people who do not care for someone with a disability.
It is hypothesised that carers of people with mental illness will have lower
subjective quality of life and perceived control than people who do not
care for someone with a disability, after the effects of personality have
been removed.
Aim Three:
To examine the relationships between personality, perceived control and
subjective quality of life in a sample of carers of people with mental illness and in
a comparison sample of people who do not care for someone with a disability.
It is hypothesised that perceived control will improve the prediction of
subjective quality of life beyond that afforded by personality and that
personality will also predict perceived control.
39
CHAPTER 3 - Study One: Method
CHAPTER 3
3 STUDY ONE: METHOD
3.1 SampleThe carer sample was recruited from the Schizophrenia Fellowship of
Victoria (SFV), an organisation that has provided a variety of services to people
with mental illness and their families for the past 21 years. From beginnings in
peer support, the organisation has expanded to include face-to-face and telephone
contact providing individual information and support, library services and the
development and publication of resource materials, and the provision of
educational courses. The sample was taken from a total of 178 questionnaires that
were voluntarily completed by participants in educational courses and forums run
by SFV for relatives of people with mental illness. Forty-five of those were
deleted from the subsequent analyses because the respondent had indicated that
they were not the primary carer of someone with a psychiatric disability. A further
six were deleted due to a significant number of incomplete items. This left a total
of 127 questionnaires for the subsequent analyses. Most of the carers (75%)
described themselves as the primary carer of someone, usually their child (70%),
with a diagnosed mental illness, mostly a psychotic disorder (58%).
The comparison sample was taken from a total of 250 questionnaires that
were sent to potential participants randomly selected from a list of individuals who
had previously participated in Deakin University research. A total of 139
questionnaires were returned following one reminder letter, a response rate of
56%. Seventeen of those questionnaires were returned but not completed. A
further eight of those were deleted from the subsequent analyses because the
respondent had indicted that they were the primary carer of someone with a
disability. Subsequently, 114 questionnaires were used in the analyses.
Sample demographics are displayed in Table 1 as percentages. The two
samples were reasonably comparable on the range of demographic variables
examined. The only noticeable differences being in income and location. A
greater percentage of the carer sample had an income less than $40,999 and a
40
CHAPTER 3 - Study One: Method
greater percentage of the comparison sample had an income greater than $41,000.
The carer sample was recruited from metro and regional areas, whilst the
comparison sample was only recruited from metro areas.
Table 1: Demographic information.Carer
(n=127)Comparison
(n=114)SexMale 31.7% 36.0%Female 68.3% 64.0%Age20-29 years 0.8% 4.4%30-39 years 5.6% 9.6%40-49 years 26.4% 25.4%50-59 years 44.0% 29.8% >60 years 23.2% 30.7%Income<$10,999 17.9% 11.9%$11,000-$25,999 25.6% 22.0%$26,000-$40,999 24.8% 15.6%$41,000-$55,999 9.4% 14.7%>$56,000 22.2% 35.8%EducationPrimary educated 4.0% 3.5%Secondary educated 49.6% 55.8%Tertiary educated 46.4% 40.7%LocationMetro 49.7% 100%Hume (regional area) 22.0%Gippsland (regional area) 28.4%
3.2 ProcedureA letter of information outlining the study and ethical safeguards, and a
questionnaire booklet were distributed to all participants in the study. (See
Appendix A and B respectively for an example of the information letter and
questionnaire given to carers, that received by the comparison sample was
virtually identical, minus any specific references to carers, and therefore has not
been included). Consent to participate in the study was implied by the voluntary
completion of the questionnaire. The carer sample received their questionnaires
when they attended an SFV educational course or forum, from the researcher, or a
staff member of SFV. They completed their questionnaires prior to partaking in
the educational course or forum and returned them to the researcher or to the SFV
staff member, who then forwarded them onto the researcher. The comparison
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CHAPTER 3 - Study One: Method
sample received their questionnaires via the mail and returned them directly to the
researcher in the prepaid envelope provided. The names and addresses of each
participant were kept separate from the questionnaires by assigning a code number
that corresponded to their questionnaire. This was necessary to follow-up
participants who had not returned their questionnaire within two weeks with a
reminder letter, after which no further contact was made.
3.3 Measurement ToolsSubjective quality of life was measured using the subjective scale of the
Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale developed by Cummins (1997b). A copy of
this scale is included in Appendix B. This tool assesses the individual’s
satisfaction with seven life domains weighted by the importance he/she places on
each of these domains. The seven domains are material well-being, health,
productivity, intimacy, safety, place in community and emotional well-being. The
aggregate of these domains provides a total subjective quality of life score.
Respondents were asked to rate the importance they place on each domain on a ten
point Likert scale and how satisfied they are with each domain on an eleven point
Likert scale. For example respondents were asked “How important to you is your
own happiness?” and “How satisfied are you with your own happiness?” This tool
was selected because it has been demonstrated to be valid, reliable and sensitive
based on evidence presented in the manual. The tool has good content validity as
its development has been based on sound theory and empirical review of the
literature. Internal reliability has been shown in numerous studies including
Cummins, McCabe, Romeo and Gullone (1994) who reported Cronbach’s alpha
for the importance subscales at .65 and for the satisfaction subscale at .73. The
tools sensitivity has been demonstrated through the findings reported in the manual
of significant differences between various populations, such as those with high and
low strength in spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, Cummins et al. (1994) found that
each of the seven subjective quality of life domains significantly discriminated
between groups classified as either high or low subjective quality of life.
Personality was measured using the extroversion and neuroticism scales of
the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991). A
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CHAPTER 3 - Study One: Method
copy of these scales is included in Appendix B. Respondents were asked to
provide yes/no responses to 12 questions on each scale. An example from the
neuroticism scale is “Does your mood often go up and down?” An example from
the extroversion scale is “Are you a talkative person?” The scales were selected
because they are widely accepted and used personality scales that have been
developed over nearly fifty years of personality research and theory development,
including extensive factor analytic research by both the scales developers (see
Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985) and many others, such as Royce and Powell (1983).
The scale manual reports reliability with alpha coefficients for the extroversion
scale at .88 for males and .84 for females, and for the neuroticism scale at .84 for
males and .80 for females. Reliability has also been tested by Francis et al. (1998)
for an Australian sample who reported Cronbach’s alpha on the extroversion scale
at .85 and on the neuroticism scale at .80.
Perceived control was measured using a modified version of the primary
and secondary control scale developed by Heeps (2000) and relinquished control
items taken from Thurber and Weisz, (1997). A copy of the modified scale is
included in Appendix B. The original version of the primary and secondary
control scale used the same statement, “When something bad happens:” to precede
all of the secondary control items and a variety of statements to precede the
primary control items. This format may have produced an artificial distinction
between the primary and secondary control items. Hence, the primary and
secondary control scale was modified by preceding all items with the statement
“When something bad happens:” There were a total of 28 items on the Perceived
Control scale comprising seven primary control items, 17 secondary control items
and four relinquished control items. Respondents were asked to rate the extent to
which they agreed with each statement on a 10 point Likert scale. An example of
a primary control item is “When something bad happens: I put lots of time into
overcoming it.” An example of a secondary control item is “When something bad
happens: I can see that something good will come of it.” An example of a
relinquished control item is “When something bad happens: I just let my feelings
out, maybe by crying or yelling”. While the scale has good face validity and its
development has been based on a thorough review of the literature, the reliability
of this modified version is unknown.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
CHAPTER 4
4 STUDY ONE: RESULTS
4.1 Aim OneTo refine the reliability and validity of the tool for the measurement of
perceived control for use in the subsequent analyses, a series of factor analyses and
other data reduction methods were conducted on the data from the combined carer
and comparison samples, totalling 241 people. A combined sample was used in
order to ensure generalisability of the results to both samples and to provide an
adequate sample size for the analysis. Refer to Appendix B for item numbering
and content to inform the following discussion.
The data adequately met the necessary assumptions for testing. The
sample size was greater than the criterion of a minimum of five subjects per
variable outlined by Tabachnick and Fidell (1996). Twelve missing cases were
detected and replaced with the variable mean. The distributions of each of the
variables were examined for normality, linearity, and univariate and multivariate
outliers. An examination of the skewness and kurtosis statistics indicated six items
were not normally distributed, items 8 and 10 being mildly negatively skewed and
items 18, 24, 25 and 27 being mildly positively skewed. No transformations were
made because of the mild nature of the skewness, because skewness is likely to be
meaningful to the data, and because factor analysis is robust to mild violations of
normality.
Examination of the scatterplots revealed the data generally met the
assumption of linearity. Mahalanobis distance was used to check for multivariate
outliers using a cutoff criterion of p<.001, none were found. Twenty-six
univariate outliers were recoded using the method outlined by Tabachnick and
Fidell (1996) which specifies “assign the outlying case(s) a raw score on the
offending variable that is one unit larger (or smaller) than the next most extreme
score in the distribution” (p. 69).
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
An initial factor analysis extracting Eigenvalues over the value of one was
performed on both the original data and the recoded data. No substantial
differences were found between the resultant solutions so it was decided to use the
original data for the analysis. Similarly, an initial factor analysis extracting
Eigenvalues over the value of one was performed on each of the samples. No
substantial differences were found between the resultant solutions deeming the
combined sample appropriate for the analysis.
Principal components factor analysis with oblique rotation was performed
on the 28 items of the control scale for the combined sample of 241. The data met
the assumptions of factorability of the correlation matrix. Most items correlated
greater than .3 with at least one other item and partial correlations were all low.
Items 13, 18 and 22 failed to correlate greater than .3 with at least one other item,
however, these items were retained as the correlations were close to .3 and they all
represented the relinquished control scale and deleting them would have deleted
the whole scale. The Kaiser-Myer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy for each
variable was greater than .5 except for item 13. It was therefore decided to delete
item 13 from the subsequent analyses. The matrix as a whole was factorable as
indicated by a significant result for Bartletts test of sphericity, 2(378) =2519.11,
p=.000, and a Kaiser-Myer-Olkin score of .87, which was greater than .6.
The initial factor analysis extracted eight factors with Eigenvalues over
one. Four factors explained more than 5% of the variance each and altogether
accounted for 48.08% of the variance. However, the scree plot clearly indicated
that there were only two factors with sufficient difference between them, together
accounting for 36.44% of the variance. A second factor analysis was performed
extracting two factors. Examination of the factor loadings revealed four items (16,
17, 18 and 19) that loaded greater than .3 on both factors. These items were
removed to obtain simple structure and a third factor analysis, extracting two
factors, was performed on the remaining 24 items. Examination of the factor
loadings revealed a further two items (11 and 12) that loaded greater than .3 on
both factors; these items were removed and a fourth factor analysis was performed.
The results showed that the two factors were independent (r= .278) and together
45
CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
accounted for 36.17% of the variance with Factor 1 accounting for 25.05% and
Factor 2 accounting for 11.11%.
Internal consistency for each of the factors was assessed using Cronbach’s
Alpha. Internal consistency was high for Factor 1 (=.83) and moderate for Factor
2 (=.68). Pearson correlation coefficients for each item for Factor 1 ranged
from .37 to .69 and for Factor 2 ranged from .18 to .51. Factor 1 consisted of 12
items that included seven primary control items and five secondary control items.
Factor 2 consisted of nine items that included six secondary control items and
three relinquished control items. In order to reduce the number of items in the
scale and to eliminate some of the items with poor scale reliability, items that
loaded on a factor less than .4 were deleted and a final factor analysis was
performed. The results of the final factor analysis are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2: Two factor solution for the Perceived Control Questionnaire, with primary control items (PC) and secondary control items (SC) identified.
Questionnaire Items ApproachControl
AvoidantControl
28. I work hard to overcome it (PC) .8110. I look for different ways to achieve the goal (PC) .7915. I put lots of time into overcoming it (PC) .7221. I work out what caused it (PC) .6726. I learn the skills to overcome it (PC) .67 2. I make an effort to make good things happen (PC) .65 9. I do something vigorous to take my mind off it (SC) .52 3. I remember you can’t always get what you want (SC) .47 8. I remember I am better off than many other people (SC) .46 1. I can see that something good will come of it (SC) .42
25. I ignore it by thinking about other things (SC) .7727. I tell myself it doesn’t matter (SC) .7624. I relax and don’t think about it (SC) .7623. I realise I didn’t need to control it anyway (SC) .5920. I don’t feel disappointed because I knew it might happen (SC) .54
Correlation between each factor .28Percent of variance explained 29.80 14.00Range of item-total correlations .41-.61 .41-.56Cronbach’s Alpha .82 .73
The resultant factor analysis showed that the two factors were independent
(r= .28) and together accounted for 43.80% of the variance with Factor 1
accounting for 29.80% and Factor 2 accounting for 14.00%. Internal consistency
for each of the factors was assessed using Cronbach’s Alpha. Internal consistency
46
CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
was high for Factor 1 (=.82) and for Factor 2 (=.73). Pearson correlation
coefficients for each item for Factor 1 ranged from .41 to .61 and for Factor 2
ranged from .41 to .56. The two factors were meaningful and reflected different
perceptions of control. Factor 1 consisted of 10 items, six primary control and
four secondary control items. It is interesting to note that all of the primary control
items loaded first on this factor, indicating a preference for primary control over
secondary control. Factor 2 consisted of five secondary control items. Effectively
the factor analysis suggests that there is a distinction in the secondary control
items, where some are similar to primary control and some are similar to
relinquished control. In examining the content of the items, it is evident that the
first factor reflects items where the problem is being positively addressed or
acknowledged in some way, even if to allow for temporary distraction. For
example, item 28 "I work hard to overcome it", item 26 "I learn the skills to
overcome it", item 9 "I do something vigorous to take my mind off it", and item 1
"I can see that something good will come of it". This description is less obvious
for item 3 "I remember you can't always get what you want" and item 8 "I
remember I am better off than many other people", but these items still indicate
that the problem is being acknowledged. Therefore, this factor has been termed
approach control. The second factor reflects items where the problem is being
avoided or disregarded. For example, item 25 “I ignore it by thinking about other
things”, item 24 "I relax and don't think about it" and item 20 "I don't feel
disappointed because I knew it might happen". Therefore, this factor has been
termed avoidant control.
4.2 Descriptive informationDescriptive information, including means, standard deviations and bi-
variate correlations for each of the variables of interest, were calculated for each
sample to inform the subsequent analyses. The variables included, total subjective
quality of life, the two variables of perceived control (approach control and
avoidant control) and the two personality variables (neuroticism and extroversion).
Table 3 displays the means, standard deviations and bi-variate correlations, for the
carer and comparison samples.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
Table 3: Means (M), standard deviations (SD) and bi-variate correlations for the variables total subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the carer and the comparison samples.
Total SQOL
Appr Control
Avoid Control Neuro Extro
Carer sample (n = 127)Total SQOL -- .42b .33b -.50b .22a
Approach Control -- .42b -.26b .19a
Avoidant Control -- -.15 .12Neuroticism -- -.18a
Extroversion --M 68.14 58.11 32.44 5.79 5.84
SD 50.87 14.46 13.90 3.11 3.18Comparison sample (n = 114)
Total SQOL -- .50b .11 -.26b .23a
Approach Control -- .12 -.20a .18Avoidant Control -- .03 -.03Neuroticism -- -.13Extroversion --
M 76.58 65.33 36.00 3.34 7.39SD 25.91 12.34 13.33 2.74 3.12
a p < .05 (2-tailed), b p <.01 (2-tailed)
The mean total quality of life scores displayed in Table 3 are the product of
importance scores by satisfaction scores, expressed as a percentage of scale
maximum. These scores were used in the subsequent analyses, however, means
were also calculated for satisfaction scores only, to be used in comparison with
other life satisfaction data and the standard score range of 70-80%SM (Cummins,
2000). The satisfaction only mean for the carer sample was 71.3714.61%SM
and for the comparison sample was 80.689.98%SM. Approach control and
avoidant control scores are also expressed as a percentage of scale maximum in
Table 3. It can be seen that the comparison sample scored higher on total
subjective quality of life, approach control and avoidant control than the carer
sample. Extroversion and neuroticism scores can be compared with those from the
scale’s manual. However, these comparisons are difficult to make as the manual
provides separate scores for males and females. The manual reported the mean
extroversion score for females at 7.603.27 and males at 6.363.80 and the mean
neuroticism score for females at 5.903.14 and males at 4.953.44. The
neuroticism and extroversion scores for the carer and comparison samples were
compared, using z scores, with the scale norms for both males and females
separately. The only consistent finding for both male and female norms was that
the comparison sample scored significantly lower on neuroticism (p<.001). It
48
CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
should be noted that the means reported for a sample of Australian students by
Francis, et al. (1998), are slightly higher for both neuroticism and extroversion
than those in the scale's manual.
The correlation matrix in Table 3 displays some interesting relationships
between the variables of interest and some notable differences between the two
samples in these relationships. In the carer sample, total subjective quality of life
correlated strongly with neuroticism, approach control and avoidant control, and
moderately with extroversion. In the comparison sample, total subjective quality
of life correlated strongly with approach control, moderately with neuroticism and
extroversion, and nonsignificantly with avoidant control. The two perceived
control variables correlated strongly with each other in the carer sample, but
nonsignificantly in the comparison sample. Approach control was moderately
correlated with neuroticism and weakly correlated with extroversion in the carer
sample. In the comparison sample approach control correlated weakly with
neuroticism and nonsignificantly with extroversion.
The data were screened for the subsequent multivariate analyses assessing
the differences between the samples and the relationships between the key
variables. There were no missing data and group sizes were comparable (carer
n=127, comparison n=114). The data for each dependent variable were screened
by group. The carer data showed avoidant control was positively skewed and had
five univariate outliers; total subjective quality of life had two univariate outliers.
The comparison data showed neuroticism was positively skewed and had four
univariate outliers; extroversion had two univariate outliers; approach control had
two univariate outliers; avoidant control had four univariate outliers; total
subjective quality of life had three univariate outliers. No multivariate outliers
were found using Mahalanobis distance. Univariate outliers were recoded as
before. Resultant data screening showed avoidant control was no longer
significantly skewed in the carer sample and neuroticism was now only marginally
skewed in the comparison sample. Hence, the recoded data were used for the
subsequent analyses as multivariate analysis of variance is reported to be
extremely sensitive to outliers (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996). Examination of the
scatterplots revealed the data met the assumption of linearity. Examination of the
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
correlation matrix revealed that the assumption of multicollinearity and singularity
was met.
Initially a multivariate analysis of variance was performed to explore any
differences between the two groups, carer and comparison samples, on each of the
variables of interest: total subjective quality of life, approach control, avoidant
control, neuroticism and extroversion. Box’s M suggested the data had met the
assumption of homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, F(15,224278)=2.34,
p=.002, which was not significant at the alpha level of .001 recommended for this
test (Coakes and Steed, 1999). The univariate tests for homogeneity of variance
for each of the dependant variables indicated that homogeneity of variance had not
been violated for the variables avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion.
However, for the variables approach control and total subjective quality of life, the
Levene’s test of equality of variances was significant, F(1,239)=4.01, p=.046 and
F(1,239)=17.57, p=.000 respectively, indicating a more conservative alpha level
should be used in the interpretation of findings associated with these variables.
Pillai’s Trace multivariate test of significance revealed there was a
significant group difference on one or more of the dependent variables
F(1,5)=11.13, p=.000. The univariate tests for each of the dependent variables are
displayed in Table 4.
Table 4: Multivariate Analysis of Variance examining the differences between the carer and comparison samples for the variables: total subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion.
F(1,237) Sig. Eta Squared
Observed Power
Total SQOL 29.19 .000 .11 1.00Approach Control 12.00 .001 .05 .93Avoidant Control 2.25 .135 .01 .32Neuroticism 41.58 .000 .15 1.00Extroversion 14.40 .000 .06 .97
The univariate tests displayed in Table 4 revealed that there were
significant main effects on every variable, except avoidant control, even with a
more stringent criterion of .01 to account for the violation of assumptions.
Examination of the means showed that carers had significantly lower subjective
50
CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
quality of life, approach control and extroversion, and significantly higher
neuroticism than the comparison group. Eta squared showed the strength of
association between the independent and dependent variables was moderate to
large and the power of the test to detect a true difference was high.
4.3 Aim Two A multivariate analysis of covariance was used to test the hypothesis, that
carers of people with mental illness will have lower subjective quality of life and
perceived control than people who do not care for someone with a disability, after
the effects of personality have been removed. The analysis was performed using
the carer sample and the comparison sample as the independent variable, group;
the dependent variables were total subjective quality of life, approach control and
avoidant control; the personality covariates were extroversion and neuroticism.
Further assumptions, required for the use of covariates in multivariate
analysis of variance, were tested. The covariates were deemed reliable. However,
the data did not meet the assumption of homogeneity of regression for total
subjective quality of life. More specifically, the relationship between neuroticism
and total subjective quality of life was significantly different between the two
samples. However, Maxwell and Delaney (1990) suggest that “the effects of
heterogeneity of regression when present will typically be small and in a
conservative direction” (p. 419). Hence, it was deemed acceptable to proceed
cautiously with the analysis. Box’s M also suggested the data had violated the
assumption of homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices, F(6,401078)=5.47,
p=.000. Furthermore, whilst Levene’s test of equality of variances was non-
significant for approach and avoidant control, it was significant for total subjective
quality of life, F(1,239)=8.31, p=.004, indicating caution should be taken with
interpretation of any significant findings.
Pillai’s Trace multivariate test of significance revealed that with effects of
neuroticism and extroversion controlled for, there were no significant group
differences on a linear combination of the dependent variables F(1,3)=1.91,
p=.128. Hence, no further interpretation of these findings was made.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
Given that the negative impact of caregiving may be more evident on some
life domains than others, the possible differences between the two samples on
subjective quality of life were further investigated by using each of the seven
domains. Hence, a second multivariate analysis of covariance was used to
examine the differences between the two groups (carer or comparison) on each of
the seven subjective quality of life domains with the effects of personality
(extroversion and neuroticism) removed.
The data met the assumption of homogeneity of regression for every
domain except safety and emotional wellbeing. Given the conservative impact this
is likely to have, the proceeding analyses were, again, cautiously undertaken.
Box’s M suggested the data had violated the assumption of homogeneity of
variance-covariance matrices, F(28,194281)=4.23, p=.000. Furthermore, whilst
Levene’s test of equality of variances was non-significant for health, it was
significant for each of the remaining six domains, indicating further caution should
be taken with interpretation of any significant findings.
Pillai’s Trace multivariate test of significance revealed that with effects of
neuroticism and extroversion removed, there were significant differences between
the two groups on one or more of the dependent variables F(1,3)=2.22, p=.034.
Table 5 displays the results for the univariate tests for each of the dependent
variables.
Examination of the univariate tests, displayed in Table 5, revealed that
there was a significant main effect of group for the domains health, F(1,237)=4.52,
p=.035 and emotional well-being F(1,237)=6.58, p=.011. Examination of the
means showed that carers had significantly lower satisfaction with their health and
emotional well-being than the comparison group after the effects of personality
had been removed. Eta squared showed the strength of association between the
independent and dependent variables was small and the power of the test to detect
a true difference was moderate. Due caution in the acceptance of these differences
is noted due to the caveats previously stated.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
Table 5: Multivariate analysis of covariance with group (carer or comparison) as the independent variable, the seven SQOL domains as the dependent variables, and neuroticism and extroversion as the covariates.
Carer Control F(1,237) Sig. Eta Squared
Observed Power
Material Well-being
M SD
67.5258.39
M SD
72.7137.87 2.89 .091 .01 .40
Health M SD
65.8784.87
M SD
77.1851.02 4.52 .035 .02 .56
Productivity M SD
67.3164.00
M SD
73.1841.97 .14 .713 .00 .07
Intimacy M SD
74.5160.86
M SD
83.3132.90 3.28 .072 .01 .44
Safety M SD
70.9269.00
M SD
79.2236.77 1.10 .295 .01 .18
Place in Community
M SD
64.2984.41
M SD
70.1448.23 .07 .796 .00 .06
Emotional Well-being
M SD
65.7655.44
M SD
78.8134.07 6.58 .011 .03 .72
It is interesting to note that each domain mean is lower for the carer sample
than the comparison sample, yet each domain standard deviation is higher for the
carer sample than the comparison sample. It should also be noted that the large
standard deviations are a function of the subjective quality of life measure being a
composite of importance scores by satisfaction scores. To examine the impact of
these large standard deviations, the same analysis was run using satisfaction scores
only. The results showed no substantial differences and the same trends were
evident in the data, indicating that the importance by satisfaction scores, despite
their large standard deviations, can be interpreted with confidence.
4.4 Aim ThreeA series of regression analyses were used to test the hypothesis that
perceived control will improve the prediction of subjective quality of life beyond
that afforded by personality, and that personality would predict perceived control.
The data have already been shown to meet most of the necessary assumptions for
testing, including outliers, multicollinearity and singularity, normality and
linearity. The sample sizes were adequate and additional assumptions of
homoscedasticity and independence of residuals were also examined and met.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
To test the first part of this hypothesis, a sequential multiple regression was
used for each of the two samples, carer and comparison. The dependent variable
was total subjective quality of life and the independent variables were entered in
two steps, where the two personality variables (neuroticism and extroversion) were
entered in the first step and the two perceived control variables (approach control
and avoidant control) were entered in the second step. Tables 6 and 7 display the
results for each sample, carer and comparison respectively, including the
unstandardised regression coefficients (B), the standardised regression coefficients
(), squared semipartial correlations (sr2), and R, R2, and adjusted R2 after entry of
all independent variables.
Table 6: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the carer sample
B t sr2
Neuroticism -2.55 -.48 -6.07c .23Extroversion .71 .14 1.73 .02Neuroticism -2.13 -.40 -5.26c .18Extroversion .45 .09 1.17 .01Approach Control 2.58 .24 2.91b .07Avoidant Control 1.54 .16 1.95a .03
R2 Adj. R2 R .37 .35 .61c
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results for the carer sample showed after Step 2 with all of the
variables in the equation 37% of the variance in carers subjective quality of life
was explained, which was highly significant, R=.61, F(4,122)=17.73, p=.000.
After Step 1, with neuroticism and extroversion in the equation 27% of the
variance in total subjective quality of life was explained, which was significant,
R=.52, Finc(2,124)=22.46, p=.000. Examination of the regression coefficients at
Step 1 indicated that only neuroticism significantly predicted total subjective
quality of life. At Step 2, approach and avoidant control added to the prediction of
subjective quality of life by an additional 10% of the variance, which was a
significant increase Finc(2,122)=9.81, p=.000. Examination of the regression
coefficients at Step 2 indicated that neuroticism, approach control and avoidant
control were significant predictors of total subjective quality of life when all
variables were entered into the equation together, extroversion made no significant
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
contribution to the equation. The regression coefficients also showed that
neuroticism was the strongest predictor followed by approach control and that
avoidant control only just reached significance; the value for neuroticism was only
marginally reduced from Step 1 to Step 2. The results demonstrate that even when
the variance in subjective quality of life attributed to neuroticism is accounted for,
approach control and avoidant control still make significant contributions.
Table 7: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the comparison sample.
B t sr2
Neuroticism -.93 -.23 -2.57a .06Extroversion .69 .20 2.18a .04Neuroticism -.62 -.15 -1.88 .03Extroversion .46 .13 1.61 .02Approach Control 3.67 .44 5.21c .20Avoidant Control .49 .07 .86 .01
R2 Adj. R2 R .30 .27 .55c
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results for the comparison sample showed after Step 2 with all of the
variables in the equation 30% of the variance in subjective quality of life was
explained, which was highly significant, R=.55, F(4,109)=11.50, p=.000. After
Step 1, with neuroticism and extroversion in the equation 11% of the variance in
total subjective quality of life was explained, which was significant, R=.32,
Finc(2,111)=6.52, p=.002. Examination of the regression coefficients at Step 1
indicated that both neuroticism and extroversion significantly predicted total
subjective quality of life. At Step 2, approach and avoidant control added to the
prediction of subjective quality of life by an additional 19% of the variance, which
was a significant increase Finc(2,109)=14.85, p=.000. Examination of the
regression coefficients at Step 2 indicated that only approach control was a
significant predictor of total subjective quality of life when all variables were
entered into the equation together, neuroticism and extroversion no longer made a
significant contribution to the equation and avoidant control did not add a
significant contribution. The results demonstrate that even when the variance in
subjective quality of life attributed to neuroticism and extroversion is accounted
for, approach control can still make a significant contribution.
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CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
To test the second part of the hypothesis, that personality would predict
perceived control, two standard multiple regressions were performed for each
sample testing the prediction of the personality variables (neuroticism and
extroversion) on approach and avoidant control separately. Hence, Table 8
displays the results for the carer sample and Table 9 displays the results for the
comparison sample, including the unstandardised regression coefficients (B), the
standardised regression coefficients (), squared semipartial correlations (sr2), and
R, R2, and adjusted R2.
Table 8: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the carer sample.
B t sr2
Approach ControlNeuroticism -.12 -.24 -2.74b .06Extroversion .07 .15 1.66 .02
R2 Adj. R2 R .09 .08 .30b
Avoidant ControlNeuroticism -.07 -.14 -1.54 .02Extroversion .05 .09 1.03 .01
R2 Adj. R2 R .03 .02 .18
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results of the first regression equation for the carer sample showed that
together neuroticism and extroversion accounted for 9% of the variance in
approach control, which was significant R=.30, F(2,124)=6.11, p=.003. However,
examination of the regression coefficients indicated that neuroticism was the only
significant predictor, explaining 6% of the variance in approach control. The
results of the second regression equation for the carer sample showed that neither
neuroticism nor extroversion significantly predicted avoidant control, R=.18,
F(2,124)=2.05, p=.133.
Table 9: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the comparison sample.
56
CHAPTER 4 - Study One: Results
B t sr2
Approach ControlNeuroticism -.09 -.18 -1.97a .03Extroversion .06 .15 1.67 .02
R2 Adj. R2 R .06 .05 .25a
Avoidant ControlNeuroticism .02 .03 .31 .00Extroversion -.01 -.03 -.31 .00
R2 Adj. R2 R .00 -.02 .04
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results of the first regression equation for the comparison sample
showed that together neuroticism and extroversion accounted for 6% of the
variance in approach control, which was significant R=.25, F(2,109)=3.81, p=.025.
However, examination of the regression coefficients indicated that neuroticism
was the only significant predictor, just reaching significance and explaining 3% of
the variance in approach control. The results of the second regression equation for
the comparison sample showed that neither neuroticism nor extroversion
significantly predicted avoidant control, R=.04, F(2,109)=.11, p=.897.
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CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
CHAPTER 5
5 STUDY ONE: DISCUSSION
5.1 Aim OneThe result of the exploratory factor analysis performed on the perceived
control scale promotes a reconceptualisation of perceived control and the
constructs of primary, secondary and relinquished control. The resultant two-
factor structure (see Table 2) included one factor termed approach control that
reflected items that addressed the problem in some way, and one factor termed
avoidant control that reflected items that avoided the problem. This factor
structure did not differentiate between primary, secondary and relinquished control
items. Rather, the approach control factor included both primary and secondary
control items, and the avoidant control factor included secondary control items
and, before the more stringent cut off criterion was used, relinquished control
items. Hence, the distinction between primary and secondary control, evident in
the original version of the scale developed by Heeps (2000) appears to have been
artificially produced by the context in which the items were embedded. In the
original scale, all the secondary control items were preceded with the one
statement “When something bad happens”, whilst the primary control items were
preceded with varying statements. When this artificial distinction was eliminated,
by modifying the scale so that all the items were preceded with the same statement
“When something bad happens”, the primary and secondary control distinction
was no longer evident in the factor structure.
The lack of empirical distinction between primary and secondary control
has two important implications for the literature on primary and secondary control.
Firstly, the finding supports the notion that the two processes are closely
intertwined (Rothbaum et al., 1982); so intertwined indeed, that a distinction could
not be found statistically in the factor structure. Hence, the notion that primary
control has functional primacy over secondary control (Heckhausen & Schulz,
1995) is challenged. A clear distinction in the factor structure would be needed to
support such a notion of primacy. Similarly, the notion that cognitions (ie.
secondary control) as well as behaviour (ie. primary control) play an important
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CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
role in perceived control, and that theories that do not acknowledge this are
inadequate (Rothbaum et al., 1982), is supported. Secondly, the finding questions
the theoretical relevance of these constructs when conceptualised as coping
strategies. Imposing this theoretical distinction on various coping strategies, as has
been done by many researchers (eg. Burton & Sistler, 1996; Thompson et al.,
1996; Weisz et al., 1994), is problematic if the distinction cannot be empirically
supported. Moreover, extreme caution must be taken not to treat all types of
secondary control in the same manner. It is clear that some types of secondary
control, such as downward social comparison and positive reinterpretation, along
with primary control, are used to acknowledge the problem and address it by
making changes in the way the problem is perceived, and some types of secondary
control, such as cognitive avoidance and self-protective responses, are used to
avoid the problem.
Overall, when something bad happens, the current data set indicates that
approach and avoidant control appear to be more relevant constructs than primary
and secondary control. That is, when an individual is faced with a difficult
situation, the key issue appears to be whether they believe they can address the
problem or avoid it, not whether they believe they can make changes to their
external environment or within their own internal environment to deal with the
problem. Further investigation of the coping literature has revealed both
theoretical and empirical support for this approach/avoidant distinction (Ebata &
Moos, 1991; Roth & Cohen, 1986; Herman-Stahl, Stemmler & Peterson, 1995). A
more detailed account of this literature follows in the introduction to Study Two.
Hence, the approach and avoidant control factor structure appears to be a valid and
reliable distinction between various strategies for maintaining perceived control,
for use in the subsequent analyses.
5.2 Aim Two The results did not provide clear support for the hypothesis that carers of
people with mental illness will have lower subjective quality of life and perceived
control than people who do not care for someone with a disability, after the effects
of personality have been removed. However, the findings should be interpreted
59
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
with caution given that the data violated some of the assumptions for testing and
there is some doubt over the use of the personality variables as covariates, as will
be discussed later. Despite this, subsequent analysis on each of the seven domains
of subjective quality of life, revealed that carers had significantly lower
satisfaction with their health and emotional well-being than the comparison sample
(see Table 5). This finding provided some evidence of lowered subjective quality
of life in the carer sample, even after the effects of personality had been removed.
An examination of the differences between the two samples without the
removal of the effects of personality, however, showed that carers had
significantly lower total subjective quality of life and approach control than the
comparison sample, as well as significantly lower extroversion and significantly
higher neuroticism (see Table 4). Not only did the two samples differ on their
scores for the personality variables. But, a difference was found, when testing the
assumptions for the covariate analysis, in the strength of the relationship between
neuroticism and subjective quality of life between the two groups. The regression
of neuroticism onto subjective quality of life was stronger in the carer sample than
the comparison sample. These factors together may have acted to mask
differences between the two samples when personality was used as a covariate. A
point that will be reiterated.
These findings of lowered subjective quality of life in the carer sample
show some consistencies with the literature. The mean total subjective quality of
life (satisfaction only) score for the carer sample was 71.37%SM. Whilst this
value is not as low as the 615.9%SM found for carers of people with a range of
severe disabilities (Cummins, 2001), it is still notably low, and borders on the
range in which life satisfaction is proposed to be no longer held under homeostatic
control (Cummins, 2000). Alternatively, the mean total subjective quality of life
(satisfaction only) score for the comparison sample was 80.68%SM which is just
within the normative range of 70-80%SM identified in the scale's manual and by
Cummins' (1995, 1998, 2000) extensive research. Furthermore, the data provided
support for the notion that carers' homeostatic control of subjective quality of life
was being challenged (Cummins, 2000). There was a trend in the data where the
means for the subjective quality of life domains were consistently found to be
60
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
lower in the carer sample than the comparison sample, and also the standard
deviations were consistently greater. This demonstrates the increase in variance
that is reported to be an indicator of subjective quality of life being held under
homeostatic control. As samples approach 70%SM, increasing numbers of
individual values represent homeostatic failure, that is below 70%SM, hence
increased variance is evident in these samples.
Overall, there is support for the conclusion that the caregiving role has a
negative impact on carers’ subjective quality of life. The finding that the impact of
the caregiving role is most prominent on health and emotional well-being, even
though these differences were marginally significant, is consistent with research
that has concluded caring for someone with a mental illness has a substantial
negative emotional impact (Sveinbjarnardottir & Dierckx de Casterle, 1997;
Lefley, 1987b) and that carers experience significant levels of distress when
measured by the General Health Questionnaire (Vaddadi, et al., 1997;
Barrowclough & Parle, 1997). Clearly, health and emotional well-being are two
important areas that must be addressed when trying to improve the subjective
quality of life of carers of people with mental illness.
Some interesting conclusions about the impact of caregiving can also be
drawn from the findings for the two variables of perceived control (approach and
avoidant control).
First, the inability of the analysis to detect a difference between the
samples in avoidant control, either with or without the effects of personality
removed (see Tables 5 and 4 respectively), suggests that carers are comparable to
the comparison sample in their use of this form of control. Avoidant control is a
complex variable to understand. It is positively correlated with subjective quality
of life, indicating that it does have a positive function and may be assumed to be
lower in samples with low subjective quality of life. However, it might be
expected that the immoderate use of avoidant control when confronted with
difficult or problematic situations may have a negative impact on subjective
quality of life, as the problem is not being addressed in any way. Hence, there
may be an optimal level of avoidant control that is strongly dependent upon given
61
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
circumstances. Moreover, the finding that carers have similar levels of avoidant
control as the comparison sample does not necessarily mean that they have optimal
use of avoidant control for the circumstances of caregiving.
Second, the analysis was also unable to detect a difference between the two
samples on approach control, with the variance attributed to personality removed
(see Table 5). A difference that was evident before the variance attributed to
personality was removed (see Table 4). The mere fact that the carers sampled had
contacted an organisation seeking support and assistance, suggests the use of
approach control over and above that of carers who have not had contact with such
organisations. Hence, a difference in approach control, with the variance
attributed to personality removed, may have been evident if a sample of carers
who had not had contact with such supportive organisations was used. However, it
is more likely that the difference between the two samples in approach control was
masked by the problems associated with using personality as a covariate and that
the experience of caregiving does limit carers' approach control.
It could be concluded that the differences in personality suggest that the
experience of caring for someone with a mental illness may increase carers’
emotional instability (neuroticism) and decrease their sociability (extroversion).
The validity of this conclusion is supported by the notion that 30% of personality
is environmentally based or learned (Tellegen et al., 1988). Whilst, this learned
component is generally considered to occur in childhood, it does indicate a more
variable aspect of adult personality as compared to the genetic component. It thus
seems likely that the experience of caregiving may have a negative effect on
carers' personality, increasing their emotional instability and limiting their
sociability. This conclusion is also consistent with the literature that highlights
caregiver burden and distress (eg. Fadden, et al., 1987; Maurin & Boyd, 1990).
Such a conclusion, however, is limited by a notable difference between the
mean score for neuroticism reported for the comparison sample in this study, and
that reported in the scale’s manual (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) and in another
Australian sample (Francis, et al., 1998). The comparison sample scored
significantly lower on the neuroticism scale. This, along with their subjective
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CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
quality of life score of 80.68%SM, suggests that the comparison sample may not
be an accurate ‘normal population’. It is possible that the comparison sample,
which consisted of individuals who have previously volunteered to participate in
Deakin University student research, may be more emotionally stable than the
general population. Hence, the difference between the two samples may be due to
this, and not the impact of the caregiving role. Yet, given that comparisons have
not been made with a sample of Australian adults, the conclusion that caregiving
impacts on carers' personality has some merit. This is true especially when the
difference between the two samples in the relationship between neuroticism and
subjective quality of life is also considered.
These findings again highlight that the use of the personality variables as
covariates in this analysis was problematic. Not only did the personality variables
violate the assumptions for testing and differ from the scale's norms. But, if
personality is susceptible to environmentally induced change, then removing the
variance in subjective quality of life and perceived control attributed to personality
may also be removing valid variance in subjective quality of life attributed to the
differential life experience of each sample.
In summary, the results showed that carers' experienced lower subjective
quality of life, approach control and extroversion, and greater neuroticism, than the
comparison sample. These results are consistent with the literature, regardless of
the doubt over the comparison sample's representativeness of the general
population, and highlight the negative impact of caring for someone with a mental
illness.
5.3 Aim ThreeThe regression analyses enabled the examination of the relationships
between the relevant concepts, personality, perceived control and subjective
quality of life. The results of the regressions for both the carer sample (see Tables
6 and 8) and comparison sample (See Tables 7 and 9) provided support for the
hypothesis that perceived control will improve the prediction of subjective quality
63
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
of life beyond that afforded by personality, and that personality will predict
perceived control.
In the carer sample, the regression analysis showed that with all variables
in the equation, neuroticism, approach control and avoidant control significantly
predicted subjective quality of life, whilst extroversion made no significant
contribution to the equation. This equation accounted for 37% of the variance in
carers' subjective quality of life. Additionally, neuroticism was found to
significantly predict approach control, and approach and avoidant control
correlated highly with each other. By incorporating these significant relationships
between the variables into a model (see Figure 3), a better understanding of the
carer data is provided.
Figure 3: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control, avoidant control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the carer sample, including standardised regression coefficients and correlations.
This model demonstrates that, in the carer sample, neuroticism predicts
subjective quality of life, both directly and indirectly via approach control. If a
latent construct for perceived control is introduced to describe the relationship
between approach and avoidant control (see Figure 4), the model becomes similar
to that initially proposed (see Figure 2). This model differs from the original
model in that the variables approach and avoidant control have replaced the
variables primary, secondary and relinquished control, and the variable
extroversion has been excluded as it failed to produce any significant relationships,
making the latent construct of personality unnecessary.
64
.42 .16
.24
Neuroticism
Approach Control
Avoidant Control
Total SQOL
-.24 -.40
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
Figure 4: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control, avoidant control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the carer sample incorporating a latent construct for perceived control.
In the comparison sample, the regression analysis showed that with all
variables in the equation, only approach control significantly predicted subjective
quality of life, whilst neuroticism, extroversion and avoidant control made no
significant contributions to the equation. This equation accounted for 30% of the
variance in the comparison sample's subjective quality of life. Additionally,
neuroticism significantly predicted approach control. A model of these significant
relationships is displayed in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Model of the significant relationships among the variables neuroticism, approach control and total subjective quality of life (SQOL) in the comparison sample, including standardised regression coefficients.
It is also interesting to compare these findings with the literature. The
correlations reported in the empirical studies reviewed previously ranged from -.31
to -.57 between measures of subjective well-being and neuroticism, and from .17
to .49 for extroversion (Costa & McCrae, 1980; Francis, 1999; Francis, et al.,
65
Neuroticism
Approach Control
Avoidant Control
Total SQOLPerceived Control
Neuroticism
Approach Control
Total SQOL
-.18
.44
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
1998; Heaven, 1989; Lu & Shih, 1997; Morrison, 1997). The bi-variate
correlations in the carer sample were -.50 for subjective quality of life and
neuroticism, and .22 for subjective quality of life and extroversion. The bi-variate
correlations in the comparison sample were -.26 for subjective quality of life and
neuroticism, and .23 for subjective quality of life and extroversion. These
correlations are all within the ranges reported in the literature. However, the
differences in the relationships between neuroticism and subjective quality of life
reported for the two samples in this study, highlight the importance of considering
the nature of the sample when reviewing these relationships in the literature. This
is because the nature of the sample may have a significant impact on the results.
Overall, it is apparent that the relationships between the variables
personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life, differ between the two
samples. This difference suggests that when homeostasis is challenged, as in the
carer sample, the maintenance of subjective quality of life becomes more
complicated. This is clearly demonstrated by comparing the complexity of the
models developed for each sample. Still, both samples provide support for the
hypothesis that perceived control will improve the prediction of subjective quality
of life beyond that afforded by personality, and that personality will predict
perceived control. However, it is important to note that this applies only to the
personality variable, neuroticism, and the perceived control variable, approach
control.
5.4 Summary Some important conclusions can be drawn from the differences between
the two samples and the relationships between the key variables. It is apparent that
higher levels of neuroticism have a substantial negative impact on subjective
quality of life. In the carer sample, where the neuroticism scores were
significantly higher than those of the comparison sample, neuroticism had a strong
direct negative impact on subjective quality of life as well as an indirect impact
through approach control. In the comparison sample, neuroticism had only an
indirect impact on subjective quality of life, through approach control.
Considering that the comparison sample had unusually low neuroticism scores
66
CHAPTER 5 - Study One: Discussion
when compared to the scale's norms, it is possible that the findings for the carer
sample, whose neuroticism scores resembled those in the scales' manual, may also
apply to a broader range of the population. Alternatively, the well documented
burden and distress of caregiving may have resulted in a change in carers'
personality. More specifically, the circumstances of caregiving have resulted in
increased emotional instability or negative affectivity, which has impacted
negatively on subjective quality of life both directly, and indirectly through
reducing their approach control.
Another effect of caregiving appears to be the use of both approach control
and avoidant control to maintain subjective quality of life. In the carer sample,
which had significantly lower approach control than the comparison sample,
approach and avoidant control correlated strongly with each other and both made
an additional contribution to the variance in subjective quality of life after the
effects of personality had been removed. In the comparison sample only approach
control made an additional contribution to the variance in subjective quality of life
additional to personality. The ability of approach and avoidant control to predict
subjective quality of life in the carer sample demonstrates the importance of both
of these constructs when considering the maintenance of subjective quality of life.
Overall, there is preliminary support for the model of personality,
perceived control and subjective quality of life depicted in Figure 2. This indicates
that personality and perceived control may be important processes to consider
when trying to understand how subjective quality of life is maintained, or held
under homeostatic control. However, given the differences between the carer and
comparison samples, this model may be dependent upon characteristics of the
sample and the notion that when homeostasis is being challenged the maintenance
of subjective quality of life becomes more complicated. Therefore, the model
needs to be substantiated by testing it on other populations.
67
CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
CHAPTER 6
6 INTRODUCTION TO STUDY TWO
The focus of Study Two is to provide further support for the model of
relationships between personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life,
whereby personality predicts subjective quality of life both directly and indirectly
via perceived control (See Figure 2). The findings from Study One prompted a
reconceptualisation of perceived control as being reflected by dimensions of
approach and avoidant control, rather than primary, secondary and relinquished
control. Hence, Study Two begins with a review of the literature on approach and
avoidant control, outlining the theoretical and empirical support for these
dimensions and their measurement. This is followed by a brief review of the
literature on the relationships between personality, approach and avoidant control,
and subjective quality of life. The population selected to be the focus of Study
Two is secondary school teachers. Teachers make an interesting population to
study as there are a number of stressors reported to be associated with teaching,
which may negatively impact on their subjective quality of life and perceived
control. Hence, the stress and coping literature on teachers is also reviewed. This
introductory section of Study Two concludes with a brief statement concerning the
focus of the current research.
As in Study One, the aims and hypotheses highlight the three parts of the
study: 1) an investigation of the factor structure of perceived control, 2) an
investigation of the differences between a sample of secondary school teachers and
a sample from the general population, and 3) an examination of the relationships
between personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life. The method
section provides information about the characteristics of the two samples, the
recruitment procedures and the measurement tools used. The results and
discussion sections are also divided into the three parts reflected in the aims and
hypotheses. These results are discussed in comparison with the literature and the
findings of Study One.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
6.1 APPROACH AND AVOIDANT DIMENSIONS OF PERCEIVED CONTROL
The results of the exploratory factor analysis on the perceived control scale
in Study One introduced the notion of two dimensions of control which were
termed approach and avoidant. The approach control factor reflected items where
the problem was being addressed or acknowledged in some way. Alternatively,
the avoidant control factor reflected items where the problem was being avoided or
disregarded altogether. This finding prompted a re-evaluation of the literature. As
previously outlined the concepts of control and coping are relatively similar when
considered in the context of difficult, problematic or stressful situations. However,
it is in the stress and coping literature that the terms approach and avoidance are
mostly found. This literature demonstrates further theoretical and empirical
support for the approach and avoidant dimensions of perceived control found in
Study One.
6.1.1 Theoretical support for approach and avoidant control Some of the theoretical antecedents of coping concepts have been briefly
outlined by Moos and Schaefer (1993), who used them to develop a model of
stress and coping. These antecedent theories included evolutionary theory and
behavioural adaptation, psychoanalytic concepts and personal growth,
developmental life cycle theories and research on coping with life crises and
transitions. Yet, it is primarily the behavioural adaptation and psychoanalytic
concepts that provide an informative basis for understanding approach and
avoidant control.
Theories of behavioural adaptation traditionally posited that goal directed
behavioural problem-solving activities enhance individual and species survival
(Moos & Schaefer, 1993). This notion is fundamental to approach control. In
Study One, items reflecting goal directed problem solving activities, such as "I
work hard to overcome it" and "I look for different ways to achieve the goal"
loaded most strongly on the approach control factor. Yet, the more recent
development of cognitive-behavioural theory has highlighted the role of cognition
in effective adaptation (Moos & Schaefer, 1993). Cognitive-behavioural theory
merges behaviour theory with cognitive theory. Cognitive theory states that
69
CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
dysfunctional or negative thinking about the self, experiential events, and the
future, accounts for disordered affect and behaviour, and that realistic or positive
thinking can promote positive change in affect and behaviour (Beck, 1997). This
cognitive element of coping is reflected in the items that loaded least strongly on
the approach control factor, such as "I remember I am better off than many other
people" and "I can see that something good will come of it". Hence, cognitive-
behavioural theory provides a sound basis for approach control.
Psychoanalytic concepts also provide understanding to the cognitive
element of approach and avoidant control. Freud introduced the notion of ego
processes that serve to resolve conflict between an individual's impulses and the
constraints of external reality (Moos & Schaefer, 1993). These ego processes are
primarily self-protective cognitive defence mechanisms (though they may be
expressed behaviourally) that can be likened to both approach and avoidant
control. Vaillant, Bond and Vaillant (1986) have developed a hierarchy of three
levels of ego defences. At the bottom of the hierarchy are immature defences,
such as projection and unrealistic fantasy. Next are neurotic defences, such as
repression and reaction formation. At the top of the hierarchy are mature defences,
such as suppression and realistic anticipation. An examination of the approach
control items in the factor analysis performed in Study One shows that these items
resemble mature defences. For example, "I do something vigorous to take my
mind off it" may be a form of suppression and "I remember you can't always get
what you want" a form of realistic anticipation. An examination of the avoidant
control items in the factor analysis shows that these items may resemble immature
and neurotic defences. For example, "I tell myself it doesn't matter" can be
likened to unrealistic fantasy and "I ignore it by thinking about other things" may
resemble repression. Hence, psychoanalytic theory also informs the approach and
avoidant dimensions of control.
These cognitive-behavioural and psychoanalytic theories demonstrate that
approach and avoidant control is a complex mix of goal directed behavioural
problem-solving activities, cognitive appraisals of the self, events and the future,
and a range of defence strategies. Yet, whilst these theories highlight important
differences in coping, clear theoretical support for the division of coping strategies
70
CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
into approach and avoidant dimensions has not been provided. It is apparent that
these dimensions have been established more from an apparent coherence in the
literature than from any true theoretical basis. Basically, the approach and
avoidant dimensions represent an attractive division of coping with stress into two
basic orientations, either toward or away from threat (Roth & Cohen, 1986). This
can be likened to the well-known fight or flight response to anxiety provoking
situations and appears to represent a basic human instinct. However, support for
the approach and avoidant division of control is grounded more in empirical
research than theory.
6.1.2 Empirical support for approach and avoidant controlMany researchers have employed exploratory factor analysis to explore the
structure of coping strategies without dictating any theoretical distinction. A
number of researchers have conducted an exploratory factor analysis on the 12
subscales of the COPE inventory developed by Carver, Scheier and Weintraub
(1989). Carver et al. (1989) and Finset and Andersson (2000) conducted the
analysis on a sample of undergraduate students; Phelps and Jarvis (1994)
conducted the analysis on a community sample of adolescents. Each of these
studies found four similar, although not always identical, factors. These factors
reflected: 1) behavioural coping subscales such as active coping and planning, 2)
cognitive coping subscales such as acceptance and positive reinterpretation, 3)
socio-emotional coping subscales such as seeking social support and focus on and
venting of emotions, and 4) avoidant coping subscales such as denial and
behavioural disengagement. The first three factors are forms of approach control
with the last clearly being avoidant control.
The notion that the first three factors are forms of approach control was
supported by Finset and Andersson (2000) who found, in a sample of people with
acquired brain injury, the first three factors loaded together on one higher level
factor that reflected approach control. Similarly, a two factor structure has been
supported by Herman-Stahl, Stemmler and Petersen (1995) who conducted an
exploratory factor analysis on 18 different coping strategies in a community
sample of adolescents and found two factors that reflected approach and avoidant
71
CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
control. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses by different authors on
these same coping strategies in a group of adolescents found three factors which
resembled cognitive approach coping, behavioural approach coping and avoidance
coping (Gomez & Gomez, submitted for publication; cited in Gomez, Holmberg,
Bounds, Fullarton & Gomez, 1999).
In summary, there has been some exploratory factor analytic support for
the approach and avoidant conceptualisation of control. Yet, none of these studies
have demonstrated the division in a sample of adults.
Confirmatory factor analysis has also been used to test the approach and
avoidant dimensions of coping. This procedure tests the goodness of fit of
theoretically constructed dimensions. A detailed study on children's coping by
Ayers, Sandler, West and Roosa (1996), used this technique to compare the
goodness of fit of three different models of coping. They used the same set of 10
coping strategies to reflect three different models of coping, a problem-focused
and emotion-focused model (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), an approach and
avoidant model (Billings and Moos, 1981) and a four-factor model developed by
the authors themselves.
The problem-focused and emotion-focused model tested by Ayers et al.
(1996) involved dividing the strategies into two groups, those that focus on
managing the problem itself (problem-focused) and those that focus on managing
the emotions associated with the problem (emotion-focused). Goodness of fit
indices showed that this model did not adequately fit the data. The likely problem
with this model is that it considers all emotion-focused coping strategies to be the
same. In fact, it is apparent that there is an important distinction between two
different types of emotion-focused strategies, those that are used to address the
problem and those that are used to avoid it. This is similar to the findings in Study
One where the exploratory factor analysis divided secondary control strategies into
two groups.
The approach and avoidant model tested by Ayers et al. (1996) also
involved dividing the strategies into two groups, those that reflect cognitive or
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
behavioural attempts to understand or resolve the problem (approach) and
cognitive or behavioural attempts to avoid the problem (avoidant). Goodness of fit
indices showed that this model also did not adequately fit the data. One reason
may have been the inappropriate classification of avoidant strategies. Whilst
cognitive avoidance and avoidant actions are clearly avoidant strategies,
distraction strategies such as distracting actions and physical release of emotions
are not. These later strategies may provide temporary relief from the problem
before it is addressed; they do not necessarily mean that the problem will be
avoided in the long term. This is supported by the finding in Study One that the
item "I do something vigorous to take my mind off it" loaded on the approach
control factor. However, it is important to note that Billings and Moos (1981) do
not make this distinction in their construction of approach and avoidant coping.
Finally, the four factor model of coping developed and tested by Ayers et
al. (2000) consisted of active coping strategies, distraction strategies, support
seeking strategies and avoidance strategies. The data adequately fit the model.
This model is attractive. It clearly identifies avoidant coping strategies as only
those that totally avoid the problem and it includes both cognitive and behavioural
attempts to deal directly with the problem in the active coping factor. These two
aspects are consistent with the findings in Study One. Hence, Ayers et al. (2001)
do provide some confirmatory factor analytic support for the approach and
avoidant dimensions, but they found that approach control fits the data better when
divided into subcategories.
Confirmatory factor analysis has also been used by Anshel, Williams and
Williams (2000) to test a different four-factor model of coping that combines the
emotion-focused and problem-focused model with the approach and avoidant
coping model. These authors divided coping strategies into approach-emotion,
approach-problem, avoidant-emotion and avoidant-problem and tested the model
on a sample of athletes from the USA and Australia who were coping with acute
stress in competitive sport. The results showed only moderate goodness of fit
indices which did not provide clear support for the model, either in the combined
sample or when the two samples were treated separately. Yet, the low correlations
between the four dimensions do indicate the independence of these dimensions.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
The inability of the analysis to confirm the model may be a result of the notion that
when faced with difficult situations, the key issue appears to be whether the
individual can address the problem or avoid it, and not whether they use emotion-
focused or problem-focused methods to do this.
Lastly, Sorlie and Sexton (2001) used a sample of adult surgical patients to
conduct a confirmatory factor analysis on the Ways of Coping Questionnaire,
developed and refined by Folkman and Lazarus (1985). The confirmatory factor
analysis showed adequate goodness of fit for two factors, one active coping factor
consisting of goal oriented coping and seeking support and one passive coping
factor consisting of wishful thinking, avoidance and thinking it over. These two
factors can be likened to approach and avoidant control.
Overall, there appears to be adequate exploratory and confirmatory factor
analytic research to support the approach and avoidant dimensions of control or
coping. However, there is some suggestion, both theoretically and empirically,
that approach control may be more meaningful if divided into subcategories. The
literature providing empirical support for approach and avoidant control also gives
examples of how these dimensions are commonly measured.
6.1.3 The measurement of approach and avoidant controlTypically, the measurement of approach and avoidant dimensions of
coping is done by creating these distinctions in general coping scales that have
been designed to measure the entire spectrum of coping responses such as the
COPE inventory (Carver et al. (1989). Alternatively, some researchers select
specific scales from broader coping inventories to reflect the dimensions. For
example, Gomez, (1997) selected the 'focus on solving the problem' factor and the
'ignore the problem' factor from the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg &
Lewis, 1993) to reflect approach and avoidant coping respectively. There appears
to be few coping scales that have been purposefully constructed to reflect the
approach and avoidant dimensions of adult coping, which is what makes the
Coping Responses Inventory (Moos, 1993) appealing.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
Moos and colleagues constructed the Coping Responses Inventory by
giving detailed consideration of how people cope with a broad range of life crises
and transitions, and by classifying these into theoretically derived categories or
coping dimensions (Moos, 1993). A classification system was established, which
considered the focus of the coping strategy as approach or avoidant, and the
method of the coping strategy as cognitive or behavioural. Hence, coping
strategies could have either an approach focus using cognitive or behavioural
methods or an avoidant focus using either cognitive or behavioural methods. The
authors then undertook a process of refinement that used both conceptual and
empirical criteria.
The resultant 48-item Coping Responses Inventory consists of eight
subscales. Approach coping consists of two cognitive scales, logical analysis and
positive reappraisal, and two behavioural scales, problem solving and seeking
guidance/support. Avoidant coping consists of the cognitive scales, cognitive
avoidance and acceptance or resignation, and the behavioural scales, seeking
alternative rewards and emotional discharge. Each of the eight subscales showed
sound internal reliability with alpha coefficients ranging from .58 to .71. Whilst
internal reliability has not been shown for the approach and avoidant dimensions,
intercorrelations among the subscales show that the approach scales and the
avoidant scales do cluster together, with the exception of one subscale (seeking
alternative rewards) which appears to correlate more strongly with the approach
scales. It is likely that seeking alternative rewards is a form of approach coping as
it acknowledges that there is a problem and seeks to deal with the negative
consequences of that problem by balancing it with other positive experiences.
Unfortunately, the items and subscales of the Coping Responses Inventory have
not been subject to factor analysis and compelling statistical confirmation of the
approach and avoidant distinction has not been provided. Yet, the theoretical basis
is attractive. The approach/avoidant and cognitive/behavioural dimensions
represent basic orientations either toward or away from threat when in stressful
situations, and encompass cognitive-behavioural theory that recognises the role of
behaviours and cognitions in adaptive functioning.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
6.1.4 ConclusionIn conclusion, there is some theoretical and empirical support for the
dimensions of approach and avoidant control. This is largely provided by
exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic research and within this literature
there is some suggestion that approach control may be better conceptualised if
divided into subcategories. There is also a clear need to further investigate these
concepts in adult samples. Further support for the approach and avoidant
dimensions of control can be gained by examining how these dimensions relate to
concepts of adjustment and well-being.
6.2 PERSONALITY, APPROACH AND AVOIDANT CONTROL AND SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE
6.2.1 The literature on approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of life Approach and avoidant coping strategies, like primary and secondary
control processes, function to maintain a perception of control. Therefore, the
theory and evidence outlined in the introduction to Study One, which suggests that
the relationship between perceived control and subjective quality of life is likely to
be significant, also applies to approach and avoidant control. Theoretically,
perceived control is necessary for optimal adaptation (Rothbaum, et al., 1982),
successful development (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995) and to feel confident that a
situation will not become so aversive it cannot be endured (Thompson, 1981).
These are all concepts that can be likened to subjective quality of life.
Furthermore, empirical research has shown that perceived control has been found
to correlate with life satisfaction (Boschen, 1996; Chistensen, et al., 1998; Schulz
& Decker, 1985).
There appears to be no specific research on approach and avoidant control
and concepts of subjective quality of life or life satisfaction. Yet, Moos (1997) has
concluded, from his own extensive research on approach and avoidant coping
responses among adults and youth, that "individuals who rely more on approach
and less on avoidance coping tend to experience better health and well-being" (p.
58). However, this conclusion was drawn from literature that focuses mainly on
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
depression. Some examples of this research follow. Billings and Moos (1984)
investigated coping strategies among adults entering treatment for depression and
found that approach coping was associated with less severe dysfunction and
avoidant coping was associated with greater dysfunction. Dysfunction was
conceptualised in terms of depression, physical symptoms, such as headaches and
trembling, and lack of self-confidence. Similarly, Ebata and Moos (1991) found
that depressed adolescents, as well as those with conduct disorder, used
significantly more avoidance coping than those with rheumatic disease or healthy
adolescents. Finally, in a sample of adults residing in the community, Holahan
and Moos (1990) found that stable psychological functioning, measured with a
depression scale only, was predicted by approach coping. However avoidant
coping was not assessed in this study. Clearly these studies demonstrate that
depression is associated with low approach coping and high avoidant coping.
The relationship between depression and approach and avoidant coping has
also been supported by other researchers. Herman-Stahl et al., (1995) researched
coping and depression amongst a community sample of adolescents. The authors
used a median split method to form four groups, approachers (high approach
coping, low avoidant coping), avoiders (low approach coping, high avoidant
coping), high generic copers (high on both approach and avoidant coping) and low
generic copers (low on both approach and avoidant coping). The results showed
that avoiders reported significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms than all
other groups and approachers reported significantly fewer symptoms of depression
than all other groups. Furthermore, high generic copers reported significantly
fewer depressive symptoms than the low generic copers, indicating the usefulness
of avoidant control in conjunction with approach control.
Using longitudinal data Herman-Stahl et al., (1995) grouped their
participants into another seven groups. The first four groups resembled those
whose coping styles were stable across time: approachers, avoiders, high generic
copers, low generic copers. Three additional groups were created for those whose
coping styles changed across time: change positive (subjects who changed from
avoiders to approachers), change negative (subjects who changed from
approachers to avoiders), and flexible copers (subjects who did not reveal rigid
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
adherence to a single mode of coping). Consistent with the above results,
adolescents who changed from approach to avoidant coping demonstrated a
significant increase in their level of depression and adolescents who changed from
avoidant to approach coping reported significant decreases in depression.
Interestingly, subjects classified as flexible copers also demonstrated a significant
decrease in depression, again indicating the usefulness of both approach and
avoidant control. However, this conclusion should be interpreted with caution as
their depression scores still remained higher than those classified as approachers.
Departing from this sole focus on depression, Finset and Andersson (2000)
found, in a sample of patients with acquired brain injury, that low approach coping
was associated with apathy and high avoidant coping was associated with
depression. These results, unlike the others, indicate the differential effect of the
two coping dimensions, suggesting that it is the avoidant dimension that is more
closely associated with depression.
Overall, the specific literature on approach and avoidant coping focuses
mainly on depression, providing little clear support for the relationship of
approach and avoidant control and concepts of subjective well-being or life
quality. However, the research does provide sound evidence of a strong
association between approach and avoidant coping and depression. Therefore, it is
likely that there will also be a significant relationship between approach and
avoidant control and subjective quality of life, as individuals who are more
depressed are also likely to be less satisfied with their lives. Moreover, there is
both theoretical and empirical support, outlined in the introduction to Study One,
that general concepts of perceived control are associated with concepts of
subjective well-being or life quality. The findings in Study One provide further
support to this conclusion.
6.2.2 The findings from Study One on approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of lifeThe relationship between approach and avoidant control and subjective
quality of life has already been supported in Study One. In the sample of carers of
people with mental illness, approach and avoidant control significantly correlated
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
with subjective quality of life (.42 and .33 respectively). In the comparison
sample, drawn from the general population, only approach control significantly
correlated with subjective quality of life (.50). These differential results for the
two samples raise the notion that the relative usefulness of approach and avoidant
control may be dependent on the situation. Carers, who are presumably faced with
more stressors, may need both approach and avoidant control to maintain their
subjective quality of life; the comparison sample, with presumably less stressors,
needs only approach control.
Such a hypothesis is supported by Roth and Cohen (1986). These authors
suggest that approach coping is preferable when the situation is controllable, the
source of stress is known or the outcome measures are long-term. Avoidant
coping is considered preferable when emotional resources are limited, the source
of the stress is not clear, the situation is uncontrollable or outcome measures are
immediate. This is based on the notion that there are costs and benefits to both
approach and avoidant coping and that the usefulness of these strategies is
dependent upon the context in which they are used. However, Roth and Cohen's
(1986) description of the costs and benefits indicate that approach coping is
associated with more benefits, such as appropriate action and ventilation of affect,
and fewer costs, such as increased distress. Alternatively, avoidant coping is
associated with fewer benefits, such as stress reduction, and more costs, such as
interference with appropriate action and emotional numbness.
Hence, it appears from the findings in Study One and from Roth and
Cohen's (1986) conceptualisation of the costs and benefits, that approach control
may be predominantly useful in maintaining subjective quality of life and avoidant
control may be useful only to a certain extent and only in certain circumstances,
such as when faced with more stressors of an unpredictable nature. While it is true
that differing circumstances influence the use of approach and avoidant control,
other factors, such as an individual's personality, are also likely to be involved.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
6.2.3 Personality and approach and avoidant controlThere appears to be little specific research in the literature on the
relationships between extroversion and neuroticism, and approach and avoidant
control or coping. Still, it has been demonstrated in one study on adolescents'
coping styles by Gomez, et al. (1999), that neuroticism significantly correlated
with avoidance coping and extroversion significantly correlated with cognitive and
behavioural approach coping. Furthermore, extroversion significantly predicted
cognitive and behavioural approach coping, and both neuroticism and extroversion
significantly predicted avoidance coping. Likewise, there is evidence, in the
results reported on the predictors of coping in adult surgical patients by Sorlie and
Sexton (2001), that extroversion predicted active (approach) coping and both
neuroticism and extroversion predicted passive (avoidant) coping. Hence, the
relationship between extroversion and neuroticism, and approach and avoidant
control has been established but requires further investigation. A number of
studies have also supported the relationship between personality and coping in
more general terms.
There are two studies that have investigated the relationship between
different personality dimensions and approach and avoidant control or coping.
Gomez (1997) investigated the personality dimensions locus of control and Type
A behaviour pattern and Carver et al. (1989) investigated a number of dimensions,
some more reflective of personality than others. One of the personality
dimensions both studies used was internal/external locus of control, i.e. whether or
not the individual believes that life's events are either under one's own control or
the result of external factors. Gomez (1997) found that this personality dimension
significantly related to both approach and avoidant coping, whilst Carver et al.
(1989) found it significantly correlated to only one of the approach COPE scales.
It seems that an internal locus of control is virtually identical to approach coping
and the belief that one can address the problem, making the separate measurement
of these two concepts somewhat redundant. Another personality dimension used
by both studies was a Type A behaviour pattern, characterised by competitive-
achievement striving, time urgency, hostility-aggression and impatience. Whilst
Gomez (1997) found this personality dimension was not significantly related to
either approach or avoidant coping, Carver et al. (1989) found a significant
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
relationship between two of the approach COPE scales and one of the avoidant
COPE scales. Whilst the Type A behaviour pattern provides interesting
information, it is not as well established and investigated as the neuroticism and
extroversion personality dimensions. Trait anxiety is in many ways similar to
neuroticism and Carver et al. (1989) found a number of significant relationships
between this and a number of the COPE scales, indicating the importance of
investigating the personality dimension of neuroticism when considering approach
and avoidant control.
Other studies have shown that extroversion and neuroticism have
significant relationships with various coping strategies. For example, neuroticism
and extroversion, along with openness to experience and conscientiousness,
significantly predicted daily coping strategy use in adult males (David & Suls,
1999). Similarly, neuroticism and extroversion significantly predicted a range of
seven coping strategies used in response to job stress by electricians working at
power plant construction sites in the United States (Mayes, Johnson & Sadri,
2000). In adolescents, extroversion was shown to have a direct positive effect on
problem and emotion-focused coping, while neuroticism had a direct positive
effect on avoidance coping (Kardum & Krapic, 2001). However, in undergraduate
university students coping with exam stress, neuroticism correlated positively and
significantly with emotion-focused coping (Halamandaris & Power, 1999).
Overall, these studies demonstrate more generally the direct effect of personality
on coping, which can be likened to perceived control.
6.2.4 Integrating personality, approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of lifeThe proposed relationships between personality, perceived control and
subjective quality of life outlined in the introduction still apply for approach and
avoidant control. Personality has long been established to predict constructs of life
quality. Personality is also likely to predict subjective quality of life indirectly
through its influence on other psychological processes that have been reported to
maintain subjective quality of life, such as perceived control. Furthermore,
support for these relationships has been provided in Study One. In the carer
sample, the personality variable, neuroticism, was found to significantly predict
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
subjective quality of life both directly and indirectly via approach control. In the
comparison sample neuroticism indirectly predicted subjective quality of life
through approach control. Interestingly, the other personality variable measured,
extroversion, was not significantly related to either approach or avoidant control or
subjective quality of life; nor did avoidant control have a significant relationship
with personality in either of the samples. This suggests that the personality
variable neuroticism and approach control are most relevant to the maintenance of
subjective quality of life.
6.2.5 Focus of the current researchThe literature on approach and avoidant coping is lacking in its support of
these dimensions of perceived control in adults and in the relationship with
subjective quality of life, or life satisfaction constructs, and personality. Still, the
theory and findings of Study One demonstrated that there are important
relationships between personality, perceived control and subjective quality of life
that are useful to understand how subjective quality of life is maintained. More
specifically, it appears neuroticism and approach control, and to a lesser degree
avoidant control, are theoretically and conceptually sound ways of understanding
and investigating these relationships. Consistent with Study One, it is
hypothesised in Study Two that personality will play a dual role in influencing
subjective quality of life both directly and indirectly through perceived control.
Study Two aims to support this hypothesis with a different group, a sample of
secondary school teachers.
6.3 SUBJECTIVE QUALITY OF LIFE IN SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS
6.3.1 The stressors associated with teachingConsiderable emphasis has been placed on teacher stress and burnout in
Australia over the last 10 years. Like the 'burden of care' that is associated with
carers of people with mental illness, the 'cost of caring' is associated with teachers.
Although teachers may not experience the significant trauma related to having
mental illness in the family, they are considered to experience numerous stressors.
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
Some of these stressors consistently highlighted in the literature are excessive
workloads and lack of resources, inadequate salary and limited career prospects,
student misbehaviour, difficult interactions with parents, poor professional
relationships with colleagues and demands of the broader educational context
(Churchill, Williamson & Grady, 1996, 1997; Griffith, Steptoe & Cropley, 1999;
Hart & Conn, 1996; Punch & Tuetteman, 1996; Sarros & Sarros, 1990).
It is on the demands of the broader educational context that Churchill et al.,
(1996, 1997) have focused their research. These authors have identified change
within the educational environment in the 1990's to be characterised by
unpredictability and dynamic complexity. In extensive interviews with primary
and secondary school teachers from Tasmanian and South Australian schools, they
found that the educational changes teachers saw as having the greatest impact on
their working lives included systemic cuts to education funding, the introduction
of national curricula, increased accountability requirements, new models for
assessing and reporting on students' work and social-justice policy initiatives.
Teachers also reported that these educational changes had resulted in an
unwelcome intensification of their work and an unwanted shift in the focus of their
work. Overall, they had negative feelings about those changes that affected the
organisational domain of their work.
Clearly, teachers face significant amounts of stress in their work lives and
this stress has been related to burnout (Pierce and Molloy, 1990; Sarros & Sarros,
1990), psychological distress (Punch & Tuetteman, 1996) and low quality of work
life (Churchill, et al., 1996; Hart & Conn, 1996).
6.3.2 The impact of stress on teachers' subjective quality of life and the role of coping strategiesBurnout is defined as physical and emotional exhaustion, detachment and
cynicism towards the people with whom one works and a loss of personal
accomplishment (Sarros & Sarros, 1990). It has been shown by Sarros and Sarros
(1990) that, when compared with Canadian and American samples, Australian
teachers demonstrated relatively low to moderate levels of emotional exhaustion
and depersonalisation burnout, but high levels of personal accomplishment
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
burnout. Furthermore, these authors consider burnout to be the result of
unsuccessful attempts to cope with the stressors associated with their work. This
is supported by Pierce and Molloy (1990) who found that higher levels of burnout
in teachers, from both government and non-government schools in Victoria, were
associated with a number of variables, the most relevant of which was the more
frequent use of regressive (ie. avoidant) coping strategies. Hence, burnout,
particularly loss of personal accomplishment, has been associated with teachers'
ability to cope with workplace stressors.
Psychological distress has also been related to workplace stressors in a
sample of West Australian secondary school teachers (Punch & Tuetteman, 1996).
Distress was measured using the General Health Questionnaire and it was found to
correlate positively and significantly to four key stressors: 1) inadequate access to
facilities, 2) the intrusion of school work into out of hours time, 3) student
misbehaviour and 4) excessive society expectations. Additionally, these authors
found that two types of support, colleaguial support and praise and recognition, the
seeking of which would be considered approach control strategies, were negatively
and significantly correlated to psychological distress. Furthermore, using
contingency table analysis the authors showed that support ameliorates the distress
teachers experience as a result of the four identified stressors. Hence, like burnout,
psychological distress is also associated with a failure to cope with stressors.
Furthermore, burnout and psychological distress indicate that teachers' subjective
quality of life may also be low.
Quality of work life is the measure used in the teaching literature that is
most similar to subjective quality of life. It is defined as "the judgements that
teachers make about the extent to which their work is satisfying and meeting their
needs" (Hart & Conn, 1996, p. 26). In an investigation of teachers' satisfaction
with key aspects of their work lives, Churchill et al. (1996) found that whilst
teachers were relatively satisfied with their relationships, they were dissatisfied
with areas where they were subject to the regulations and expectations of the
education system, and with their capacity to exert some degree of influence over
educational and social matters which affect their work. It is apparent from these
findings that the circumstances of teachers' work may limit their opportunity to use
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
approach control strategies, which may then impact negatively on their subjective
quality of life. The relevance of approach control strategies in maintaining quality
of work life has been highlighted by Hart and Conn (1996). These authors not
only identify the negative factors or stressors that are associated with quality of
work life, but also a range of positive factors, such as curriculum consultation,
effective school policies, feedback, goal congruence and participative decision-
making, which are conceptually related to approach control strategies.
Few studies appear to have specifically examined the use of approach and
avoidant control strategies by teachers. However, Griffith, Steptoe and Cropley
(1999) have investigated the effects of coping on stress in a sample of teachers in
London. Coping was measured with a selection of items from the COPE inventory
that reflect the four coping strategies: active planning, seeking social support,
suppression of competing activities, and behavioural and mental disengagement.
The results showed that disengagement and suppression significantly predicted
work stress independently of age, gender, class size, occupational grade and
negative affectivity. Clearly, disengagement is an avoidant control strategy and
thus it is not surprising that it was related to stress. However, suppression of
competing activities is measured with items focusing on preventing distraction and
concentrating on the problem and appears to be an approach control strategy.
Therefore, it is surprising that it is related to stress. It is possible that preventing
distraction and concentrating on the problem may exclude the use of any cognitive
approach control strategies, such as positive reinterpretation and distraction, and
that without cognitive strategies approach control may not be as useful.
Unfortunately, the authors do not include cognitive approach control strategies in
their study.
6.3.3 Conclusion and focus of the current researchOverall, it is apparent that teachers face a variety of stressors within an
inherently complex and unstable educational environment within which they must
learn to cope in order to maintain their subjective quality of life. This will
probably require the use of both approach and avoidant control strategies. Given
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CHAPTER 6 - Study Two: Introduction
the ongoing workplace stressors associated with teaching, and the need to cope
with these stressors, teachers make an interesting population to investigate.
This second study will continue to examine the relationships between
subjective quality of life, perceived control conceptualised as approach and
avoidant control strategies, and personality conceptualised as neuroticism and
extroversion. The study aims to explore the factor structure of a different set of
coping strategies representing perceived control and to test the finding from the
first study, that personality predicts subjective quality of life both directly and
indirectly through perceived control.
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CHAPTER 7 - Study Two: Aims and Hypotheses
CHAPTER 7
7 STUDY TWO: AIMS AND HYPOTHESES
Aim One:
To develop a valid and reliable tool for the measurement of perceived
control by examining the factor structure of the Coping Response Inventory, which
was developed to reflect approach and avoidant coping.
Aim Two:
To examine differences in personality, perceived control and subjective
quality of life between a sample of secondary school teachers and a comparison
sample of people from the general population.
It is hypothesised that secondary school teachers will have lower
subjective quality of life and perceived control than people from the
general population, after the effects of personality have been removed.
Aim Three:
To examine the relationships between personality, perceived control and
subjective quality of life in a sample of secondary school teachers and in a
comparison sample of people from the general population.
It is hypothesised that perceived control will improve the prediction of
subjective quality of life beyond that afforded by personality and that
personality will predict perceived control.
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CHAPTER 8 - Study Two: Method
CHAPTER 8
8 STUDY TWO: METHOD
8.1 SampleThe teacher sample was recruited from a total of 170 questionnaires sent to
nine public Secondary Colleges in the Eastern metropolitan region of Melbourne,
Australia. A total of 85 questionnaires were voluntarily completed by qualified
secondary school teachers following one reminder letter, a response rate of 50%.
Most of these teachers were employed full time (93.7%) and had worked an
average of 20 years in the field.
The comparison sample was taken from a total of 150 questionnaires that
were sent to potential participants that were recruited via a word of mouth method,
who also primarily lived in the Eastern suburbs of metropolitan Melbourne. A
total of 88 questionnaires were returned following one reminder letter, a response
rate of 58%. One of those questionnaires was returned but not sufficiently
completed. Subsequently, 87 questionnaires were used in the analyses. Most of
these participants worked in the business sector (32.9%), a number worked in
education (18.8%) mainly as primary school teachers, in special education settings
or as childcare workers. The remaining participants were spread across the
government and health sectors, the retail/service and labour industry, and
participants who fulfilled home duties, were students or retired.
Background information is displayed in Table 10 as percentages. The two
samples were reasonably comparable on the range of demographic variables
examined. However, the comparison sample was generally younger in age and
more evenly distributed across the income categories than the teacher sample.
There were notable differences between the samples in two of the areas of
difficulty identified. (Note: percentages do not sum to 100% as they represent the
percentage of people who identified each area as one of their three areas of
difficulty). A greater percentage of the teacher sample identified difficulty with
time management and work than the comparison sample. Furthermore, the teacher
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CHAPTER 8 - Study Two: Method
sample showed significantly greater frequency of difficulties overall than the
comparison sample, t=2.40, p=.018.
Table 10: Background information.Teacher(n=85)
Comparison(n=87)
SexMale 42.4% 39.1%Female 57.6% 60.9%Age<20 years 0.0% 3.5%20-29 years 21.2% 42.4%30-39 years 10.6% 12.9%40-49 years 35.3% 7.1%50-59 years 30.6% 20.0% >60 years 2.4% 14.1%Income<$10,999 0.0% 12.8%$11,000-$25,999 3.5% 15.1%$26,000-$40,999 14.1% 15.1%$41,000-$55,999 37.6% 20.9%>$56,000 44.7% 36.0%Areas of difficultyTime management 78.82% 62.07%Motivation 30.59% 36.78%Interpersonal relationships 29.41% 29.89%Work 48.24% 36.78%Health 40.00% 49.43%Finances 31.76% 42.53%Safety 1.18% 4.60%Other 15.29% 20.69%Frequency of difficultyMeana 48.00 39.56Standard Deviation 19.49 17.18
ap<.05
8.2 ProcedureA letter of information outlining the study and ethical safeguards, together
with a questionnaire booklet, were distributed to all participants in the study (See
Appendix C and D respectively). Consent to participate in the study was implied
by the voluntary completion of the questionnaire. The teacher sample received
their questionnaires from the assistant principal at the school in which they worked
and returned them directly to the researcher in the prepaid envelope provided. The
comparison sample received their questionnaires via the mail and returned them
directly to the researcher in the prepaid envelope provided. The names and
addresses of each participant were kept separate from the questionnaires by
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CHAPTER 8 - Study Two: Method
assigning a code number that corresponded to their questionnaire. This was
necessary to follow-up participants who had not returned their questionnaire
within two weeks with a reminder letter, after which no further contact was made.
8.3 Measurement ToolsSubjective quality of life was measured using the subjective scale of the
Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale developed by Cummins (1997b) as detailed
in Study One. A copy of this scale is included in Appendix D. It was decided that
only the satisfaction scores would be used in this study as it has become apparent
that the practice of using satisfaction scores weighted by importance scores is
statistically problematic (see Evans, 1991; Trauer & Mackinnon, in press). This
was also evidenced by the inflated standard deviations in the total and domain
subjective quality of life scores used in Study One. Furthermore, it is possible that
respondents cognitively make value judgements when completing the satisfaction
questions.
Personality was measured using the extroversion and neuroticism scales of
the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1991) as
detailed in Study One. A copy of this scale is included in Appendix D.
Perceived control was measured using the Coping Responses Inventory -
Adult form (Moos, 1993). A copy of the scale is included in Appendix D. Some
minor modifications were made to the introduction to the scale. The original
version asked respondents to identify one problem and complete the questionnaire
with this problem in mind. In order to make the responses more indicative of
perceived control this part was deleted and respondents were prompted to think of
three aspects of their lives that they have difficulties or problems with, following
which they rated the frequency of these difficulties on a 10 point Likert scale. The
respondents then indicated the extent to which they used each of the 48 items of
the Coping Responses Inventory on a 4 point Likert scale anchored with: No Not
at all, Yes Once or Twice, Yes Sometimes, and Yes Fairly Often. This was
consistent with the original version of the scale. These 48 items have been grouped
into 8 subscales. A description of these scales, as outlined in the manual, is
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CHAPTER 8 - Study Two: Method
provided in Table 11, and the items which comprise these scales are provided in
Appendix E.
Table 11: Description of the scales in the Coping Response InventoryScale Description
Approach Coping
1. Logical Analysis Cognitive attempts to understand and prepare mentally for a stressor and its consequences
2. Positive Reappraisal Cognitive attempts to construe and restructure a problem in a positive way while still accepting the reality of the situation
3. Seeking Guidance & Support
Behavioural attempts to seek information, guidance, or support
4. Problem Solving Behavioural attempts to take action to deal directly with the problem
Avoidant Coping
5. Cognitive Avoidance Cognitive attempts to avoid thinking realistically about a problem
6. Acceptance or Resignation Cognitive attempts to react to the problem by accepting it
7. Seeking Alternative Rewards
Behavioural attempts to get involved in substitute activities and create new sources of satisfaction
8. Emotional Discharge Behavioural attempts to reduce tension by expressing negative feelings
Reproduced from Moos (1993) p. 15.
The scale's manual reports reliability with alpha coefficients for males and
females for each of these scales, as well as means and standard deviations. The
alpha coefficients range from .61 to .74 for males and .58 to .71 for females. The
manual also reports data to show that the eight scales are moderately stable over
time, with the average correlation of the eight scales for males and females
respectively, .45 and.43 at a 12 month follow-up.
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CHAPTER 9
9 STUDY TWO: RESULTS
9.1 Aim OneIn order to explore the factor structure of the Coping Responses Inventory
(Moos, 1993) and to refine the reliability and validity of the perceived control
variables used in the following analyses, a series of factor analyses and other data
reduction methods were conducted on the data from the combined teacher and
comparison samples, totalling 172 people. As in Study One a combined sample
was used in order to ensure generalisability of the results to both samples and to
provide a larger sample size for the factor analyses. Refer to Appendix D or E for
item numbering and content to inform the following discussion.
The data did not adequately meet all of the necessary assumptions for
testing. The sample size was less than the criterion of a minimum of five subjects
per variable outlined by Tabachnick and Fidell (1996). The distributions of each of
the variables were examined for normality, linearity and univariate and
multivariate outliers. Thirteen missing cases were detected and replaced with the
variable mean. An examination of the skewness and kurtosis statistics indicated
five items were not normally distributed, item 17 being mildly negatively skewed
and items 19, 24, 45 and 46 being mildly positively skewed. No transformations
were made because of the mild nature of the skewness, because skewness is likely
to be meaningful to the data, and because factor analysis is robust to mild
violations of normality. Examination of the scatterplots revealed the data
generally met the assumption of linearity. Mahalanobis distance was used to
check for multivariate outliers using a cutoff criterion of p<.001. None were
found. Univariate outliers were detected. However, these were not recoded. As
the scale only had four points this would have reduced the variance in the
distributions considerably. In order to create a factorable correlation matrix and to
reduce the sample size needed for the factor analysis Items 7, 17, 21, 39, 40, 48,
were deleted as they failed to correlate greater than .3 with any other item.
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A principal components factor analysis with oblique rotation was
performed on the 42 items, extracting eight factors to represent the number of
scales in the Coping Responses Inventory. All items correlated greater than .3
with at least one other item and partial correlations were all low. Inspection of the
Anti-Image correlation matrix revealed that the measure of sampling adequacy
was greater than the acceptable level of .5 for all of the items. The Kaiser-Myer-
Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was greater than .6 at .71. Bartlett's test of
sphericity was significant 2(861)=2304.92, p=.000. The eight factors together
explained 47.36% of the variance. Only two of these factors explained more than
5% of the variance and the scree plot indicated two clear factors. However, six of
these factors did explain more than 4% of the variance and although the scree plot
indicated two clear factors, there was a distinction evident in the plot for six
factors. In an attempt to support the theoretical construct of the original tool, it
was decided to conduct a six-factor solution as well as a two-factor solution.
A second factor analysis on the 42 items was conducted extracting two
factors. Together the two factors accounted for only 24.81% of the variance and
examination of the communalities for each of the items revealed that the variance
accounted for by the two factors was low in most of the items. Examination of the
factor loadings revealed items 24, 3, 19, 38 did not load greater than .3 on either
factor and item 23 loaded greater than .3 on both factors. These items were
deleted to create simple structure and a third factor analysis was completed.
In the final analysis the two factors together accounted for 26.55%, with
Factor 1 accounting for 14.55% and Factor 2 accounting for 10.23%. The two
factors were independent, correlating -.05, and internal consistency was high for
each factor with Cronbach's Alpha for Factor 1 at .84 and for Factor 2 at .80.
Factor 1 consisted of 25 items that consistently reflected the items from the four
approach coping scales in the Coping Responses Inventory. However there were
three items (15, 31 and 47) from the avoidant coping scale, selecting alternative
rewards, that loaded on this factor. This result was expected as it was already
highlighted that this scale did not really reflect avoidant coping. Item 16 "Did you
take a chance and do something risky?", from the emotional discharge scale, also
loaded on this factor. This item clearly does not reflect emotional discharge, but is
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more similar to seeking alternative rewards. Factor 2 consisted of 12 items that
consistently reflected items from three avoidant coping scales, cognitive
avoidance, acceptance or resignation and emotional discharge. Given that the two
factors only accounted for a relatively small amount of the variance and the
communalities for most of the items were low, the decision to try and find a six
factor solution was further supported.
A factor analysis on the 42 items was performed extracting six factors.
Together the six factors accounted for 43.53% of the variance and examination of
the communalities for each of the items revealed that the variance the six factors
accounted for was reasonable for most of the items. Examination of the factor
loadings revealed items 1, 25, 41, 45, 37, 8, 18, 27, 36, 32, loaded greater than .3
on more than one factor and item 44 loaded did not load greater than .3 on any
factor. These items were deleted to create simple structure and a second factor
analysis extracting six factors was performed. Examination of the factor loading
again revealed that a number of items loaded on more than one factor. Items 22,
43, 35, 9, 4, 19, loaded greater than .3 on more than one factor and item 31 loaded
did not load greater than .3 on any factor. These items were deleted and a third
factor analysis extracting six factors was conducted on the remaining 24 items.
The factor loadings showed item 33 loaded greater than .3 on more than one
factor, it was deleted and a final factor analysis extracting six factors was
conducted. Simple structure was obtained.
Together the six factors accounted for 53.71% of the variance. The six
factors were independent of each other with the highest correlation being between
Factor 1 and Factor 5 at -.23. Factor 1 consisted of five items that explained
16.32% of the variance and showed internal consistency (=.68). All of these
items were from the positive reappraisal scale of the Coping Responses Inventory.
Factor 2 consisted of six items that explained 13.59% of the variance and showed
internal consistency (=.75). Three of these items were from the acceptance or
resignation scale, and three were from the cognitive avoidance scale, overall the
items clearly represented avoidant control. Factor 3 consisted of two items that
explained 6.51% of the variance and showed internal consistency (=.62). Both of
these items were from the seeking guidance and support scale. Factor 4 consisted
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
of three items that explained 6.16% of the variance and showed internal
consistency (=.54). All of these items were from the problem solving scale.
Factor 5 consisted of five items that explained 5.76% of the variance and showed
internal consistency (=.65). Three of these items were from the seeking
alternative rewards scale and the fourth item was item 16 "Did you take a chance
and do something risky?" labelled on the emotional discharge scale but clearly not
reflecting emotional discharge. Factor 6 consisted of three items that explained
5.37% of the variance and showed internal consistency (=.62). Two of these
items were from the seeking alternative rewards scale (item 46 "Did you lose hope
that things would ever be the same?" and item 38 "Did you expect the worse
possible outcome?) and one was from the emotional discharge scale (item 24 "Did
you keep away from people in general?). The content of these items revealed that
the scale reflected acceptance and resignation in a very negative sense, whereas the
acceptance and resignation items in Factor 2 had a more positive sense (eg item 6
"Did you feel that time would make a difference-that the only thing to do was
wait?").
The two-factor solution indicated that there were approach and avoidant
factors within the data. The six-factor solution indicated some support for the
scales of the Coping Response Inventory. However, neither of these factor
solutions appeared to provide valid and reliable factors to use in the subsequent
analyses. Therefore, it was decided to construct scores for each of the eight scales
of the Coping Responses Inventory and use these in a factor analysis extracting
two factors to reflect approach and avoidant control. The advantages of this are
that there would be more variability in the variables than the four point scales of
the individual items, and there would be less variables in the analysis making the
sample size adequate.
Hence, scores for each of the eight scales of the Coping Responses
Inventory were computed in accordance with the manual by scoring them on a
scale of 0 to 3 and adding the relevant items together. Cronbach's Alpha was
calculated to assess the internal consistency for each scale before conducting the
factor analysis. Internal consistencies, means and standard deviations are
displayed in Table 12 for comparison with the scale's manual.
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
Table 12: Means, standard deviations (SD) and internal consistencies (Alpha) of the Coping Responses Inventory Scale Mean SD Alpha
Approach Coping
Logical Analysis 12.20 2.86 .63
Positive Reappraisal 11.55 3.35 .71
Seeking Guidance & Support 9.15 3.20 .58
Problem Solving 12.34 2.81 .65
Avoidant Coping
Cognitive Avoidance 6.56 3.62 .71
Acceptance or Resignation 6.01 3.23 .52
Seeking Alternative Rewards 9.22 3.27 .62
Emotional Discharge 5.72 2.67 .39
These results are generally comparable to those in the scale's manual. The
means for the each of the approach coping scales were marginally higher than in
the manual and those for the avoidant coping scales were comparable for cognitive
avoidance, marginally lower acceptance or resignation, marginally higher for
emotional discharge and substantially higher for seeking alternative rewards.
Internal consistency was comparable with that in the scale's manual with the
exception of emotional discharge, which was somewhat low. However, internal
consistency is acceptable for all of the scales according to Boyle (1991) who
argues that the optimal range for internal consistency is between .3 and .7.
A principal components factor analysis with oblique rotation was
performed on the eight scales extracting two factors. The data adequately met all
the necessary assumptions for testing. The sample size was adequate. The
distributions of each of the variables were examined and normality and linearity
was evident. No multivariate outliers were detected using Mahalanobis distance
and a cutoff criterion of p<.001. Univariate outliers were detected. However,
these were not recoded into the distribution. The correlation matrix was deemed
factorable. Each variable correlated greater than .3 with at least one other variable.
Inspection of the Anti-Image correlation matrix revealed that the measure of
sampling adequacy was greater than the acceptable level of .5 for all of the items.
The Kaiser-Myer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was greater than .6 at .72.
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant 2(28)=360.36, p=.000. Communalities
appeared sufficient.
The two factors together explained 58.60% of the variance. The first factor
accounted for 33.79% and the second factor accounted for 24.81%. Examination
of the scree plot indicated that two factors fit the data best. Examination of the
factor loadings revealed that the variable, seeking alternative rewards, loaded most
strongly on the first factor but also greater than .3 on the second factor. It was
deleted and the analysis re-run. Table 13 displays the resultant factor structure.
Table 13: Factor solution for the eight scales of the Coping Responses Inventory. Scale Approach
ControlAvoidant Control
Logical Analysis .80Positive Reappraisal .80Problem Solving .77Seeking Guidance & Support .64
Cognitive Avoidance .86Acceptance or Resignation .79Emotional Discharge .69
Correlation between each factor -.04Percent of Variance explained 34.34 26.29Range of item-total correlations .20-.42 .16-.40Cronbach's Alpha .75 .69
The resultant factor analysis showed that the two factors were independent
(r=-.04) and together accounted for 60.62% of the variance with Factor 1
accounting for 34.34% and Factor 2 accounting for 26.29%. Internal consistency
for each of the factors was adequate. The two factors were meaningful and
reflected approach and avoidant control.
9.2 Aim TwoTo begin, a multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine
differences between the sample of teachers and the comparison sample on all of
the variables, subjective quality of life, approach control, avoidant control,
extroversion and neuroticism.
The data for each dependent variable were screened by group in
preparation for the subsequent analyses. There were no missing data and the
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
group sizes were comparable (teacher sample n=85, comparison sample n=87).
Examination of the skewness and kurtosis statistics revealed that the data were
normally distributed. Univariate outliers were detected and recoded by "assigning
the outlying case a raw score on the offending variable that is one unit larger (or
smaller) than the next most extreme score" as multivariate analysis of variance is
reported to be extremely sensitive to outliers (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996, p. 69).
In the teacher sample one outlying case was recoded on the subjective quality of
life variable, two on approach control and one on avoidant control. In the
comparison sample two outlying cases were recoded on the subjective quality of
life variable, one on neuroticism and one on avoidant control. One multivariate
outlier were detected using Mahalanobis distance and a criterion cutoff p<.001,
this case was deleted from the analysis, reducing the comparison sample to n=86.
Examination of the correlation matrix revealed that the assumption of
multicollinearity and singularity was met. Box's M suggested that the data had
met the assumption of homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices.
F(15,114961)=8.16, p=.928, which was non-significant. The univariate tests for
homogeneity of variance indicated that this assumption had not been violated for
any of the dependent variables.
Pillai's Trace multivariate test of significance revealed there was no
significant group difference on one or more of the dependent variables
F(5,165)=.58, p=.713. Hence, no further investigation of these findings was made,
as the two samples did not differ on any of the variables of interest. Accordingly,
the hypothesis that secondary school teachers will have lower subjective quality of
life and perceived control than people from the general population, after the effects
of personality have been removed could not be supported and it was deemed
unnecessary to proceed with the analysis of covariance. Furthermore, there were
problems evident in Study One where the use of the personality covariates
appeared to mask important differences between the two samples in subjective
quality of life and perceived control.
The two samples were combined to examine the relationships between the
variables and to compare the means and correlations to those reported in the scales'
manuals and in Study One. Table 14 displays the means, standard deviations and
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
bi-variate correlations for the variables subjective quality of life, approach control,
avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the combined teacher and
comparison sample to inform the subsequent analyses.
Table 14: Means (M), standard deviations (SD) and bi-variate correlations for the variables subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the combined sample (n=171).
Total SQOL
Appr Control
Avoid Control Neuro Extro
Total SQOL -- .38b -.25b -.44b .24b
Approach Control -- -.08 -.08 .19a
Avoidant Control -- .30b -.08Neuroticism -- -.27b
Extroversion --M 76.49 45.02 22.14 4.82 7.15
SD 11.60 8.92 8.83 3.49 3.59a p < .05 (2-tailed), b p <.01 (2-tailed)
The mean subjective quality of life score (76.49%SM) was within the
standard score range of 70-80%SM (Cummins 2000). Approach and avoidant
control scores are also expressed as a percentage of scale maximum. It can be
seen that approach control (45.02%SM) is used more than avoidant control
(22.14%SM). It is also interesting to note that these scores are lower than those in
Study One for both the carer sample (approach control 58.11%SM and avoidant
control 32.44%SM) and the comparison sample (approach control 65.33%SM and
avoidant control 36.00%SM). The extroversion (7.15) and neuroticism (4.82)
means are comparable with those in the scale's manual, which reported the mean
extroversion score for females at 7.60 and for males at 6.36 and the mean
neuroticism score for females at 5.90 and males at 4.95. Again, z scores were
calculated to assess the differences between the sample and both the male and
female norms separately. No significant differences with both the male and female
norms were found. These results are more consistent with the scale's norms than
those in the comparison sample in Study One.
The correlation matrix in Table 14 displays some interesting relationships
between the variables of interest and some notable differences between these
relationships and those found in Study One. Subjective quality of life correlates
significantly with all of the variables, neuroticism, extroversion, approach control
and avoidant control. Consistent with Study One the strongest correlations are
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
between subjective quality of life and neuroticism and approach control.
Extroversion showed a weak positive relationship with approach control and
neuroticism showed a moderate relationship with avoidant control. Interestingly,
avoidant control appeared to be relating to the other variables differently from
Study One. It correlated significantly and negatively with subjective quality of life
and positively with neuroticism, which is opposite to the non-significant
correlations in Study One. Furthermore avoidant control and approach control
correlate very weakly. This indicates that this measure of avoidant control is quite
different to that used in Study One.
9.3 Aim Three A series of regression analyses were used to test the hypothesis that
perceived control will improve the prediction of subjective quality of life beyond
that afforded by personality, and that personality would predict perceived control.
The data have already been shown to meet most of the necessary assumptions for
testing, including outliers, multicollinearity and singularity, normality and
linearity. The sample sizes were adequate and additional assumptions of
homoscedasticity and independence of residuals were also examined and met.
To test the first part of this hypothesis, a sequential multiple regression was
used for the combined sample. The dependent variable was total subjective quality
of life and the independent variables were entered in two steps, where the two
personality variables (neuroticism and extroversion) were entered in the first step
and the two perceived control variables (approach control and avoidant control)
were entered in the second step. Tables 15 displays the results, including the
unstandardised regression coefficients (B), the standardised regression coefficients
(), squared semipartial correlations (sr2), and R, R2, and adjusted R2 after entry of
all independent variables.
Table 15: Regression of neuroticism, extroversion, approach control and avoidant control on subjective quality of life in the combined sample
B t sr2
Neuroticism -1.04 -.40 -5.66c .16
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Extroversion .29 .13 1.77 .02Neuroticism -.92 -.36 -5.18c .14Extroversion .16 .07 1.00 .01Approach Control 1.31 .33 5.05c .13Avoidant Control -.44 -.12 -1.76 .02
R2 Adj. R2 R .33 .31 .57c
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results for the combined sample showed after Step 2 with all of the
variables in the equation 33% of the variance in subjective quality of life was
explained, which was highly significant, R=.57, F(4,166)=20.14, p=.000. After
Step 1, with neuroticism and extroversion in the equation 21% of the variance in
subjective quality of life was explained, which was significant, R=.45,
Finc(2,168)=21.86, p=.000. Examination of the regression coefficients at Step 1
indicated that only neuroticism significantly predicted total subjective quality of
life. At Step 2, approach and avoidant control added to the prediction of
subjective quality by an additional 12% of the variance, which was a significant
increase Finc(2,166)=14.82, p=.000. Examination of the regression coefficients at
Step 2 indicated that neuroticism and approach were the only significant predictors
of subjective quality of life when all the variables were entered into the equation
together, with avoidant control approaching significance and extroversion making
no significant contribution to the equation. The results demonstrate that even
when the variance in subjective quality of life attributed to neuroticism is
accounted for, approach control can still make a significant contribution.
To test the second part of the hypothesis, that personality would predict
perceived control, two standard multiple regressions were performed for the
combined sample testing the prediction of the personality variables (neuroticism
and extroversion) on approach and avoidant control separately. Hence, Table 16
displays the results including the unstandardised regression coefficients (B), the
standardised regression coefficients (), squared semipartial correlations (sr2), and
R, R2, and adjusted R2.
Table 16: Regression of neuroticism and extroversion on approach control and avoidant control for the combined sample.
B t sr2
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
Approach ControlNeuroticism -.02 -.04 -.46 .00Extroversion .10 .18 2.28a .03
R2 Adj. R2 R .04 .03 .19a
Avoidant ControlNeuroticism .21 .29 3.85c .08Extroversion -.03 -.00 -.05 .00
R2 Adj. R2 R .09 .08 .30c
ap<.05, bp<.01, cp<.001
The results of the first regression equation showed that together
neuroticism and extroversion accounted for 4% of the variance in approach
control, which was significant R=.19, F(2,168)=3.23, p=.042. However,
examination of the regression coefficients indicated that extroversion was the only
significant predictor explaining 3% of the variance in approach control. The
results of the second regression equation showed that together neuroticism and
extroversion accounted for 9% of the variance in avoidant control, which was
significant, R=.30, F(2,168)=8.04, p=.000. However, examination of the
regression coefficients indicated that neuroticism was the only significant predictor
explaining 8% of the variance in avoidant control.
9.4 Additional analysesThe same analyses for Aim Two and Three were re-run on the sample
divided into two subgroups, those with low subjective quality of life, less than
70%SM, and those with high subjective quality of life, greater than 70%SM.
Table 17 displays the means, standard deviations and bi-variate correlations for the
variables subjective quality of life, approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism
and extroversion for the two subgroups, high and low subjective quality of life, to
inform the subsequent analyses.
Table 17: Means, standard deviations and bi-variate correlations for the variables subjective quality of life (SQOL), approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion for the two subgroups, high and low subjective quality of life.
Total SQOL
Appr Control
Avoid Control Neuro Extro
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
High SQOL (n = 125)Total SQOL -- .19a -.19a -.30b .12Approach Control -- .03 .06 .10Avoidant Control -- .18a -.04Neuroticism -- -.22a
Extroversion --M 82.13 46.99 21.04 4.09 7.66
SD 7.18 9.08 8.21 3.39 3.81Low SQOL (n = 46)
Total SQOL -- .25 -.22 -.24 .08Approach Control -- -.19 -.06 .24Avoidant Control -- .48b -.08Neuroticism -- -.17Extroversion --
M 61.16 39.65 25.11 6.83 5.78SD 7.44 6.37 10.05 2.95 3.81
a p < .05 (2-tailed), b p <.01 (2-tailed)
A multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine any differences
between the two subgroups approach control avoidant control, extroversion and
neuroticism. Box's M suggested that the data had met the assumption of
homogeneity of variance-covariance matrices. F(10,34143)=1.64, p=.089, which is
non-significant. The univariate tests for homogeneity of variance indicated that
this assumption had not been violated for any of the dependent variables. Pillai's
Trace multivariate test of significance revealed there was a significant group
difference on one or more of the dependent variables F(4,166)=11.95, p=.000.
The univariate tests for each of the dependent variables are displayed in Table 18.
Table 18: Multivariate Analysis of Variance examining the differences between the subgroups, high and low subjective quality of life for the variables approach control, avoidant control, neuroticism and extroversion.
F(1,169) Sig. Eta Squared
Observed Power
Approach Control 21.18 .000 .11 1.00Avoidant Control 5.10 .025 .03 .61Neuroticism 23.43 .000 .12 1.00Extroversion 8.13 .005 .05 .81
The univariate tests displayed in Table 18 revealed that there were
significant main effects on every variable. Examination of the means reported in
Table 17 showed that those with high subjective quality of life had significantly
higher approach control and extroversion and significantly lower neuroticism and
avoidant control than those with low subjective quality of life. Eta squared
showed the strength of association between the independent and dependent
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CHAPTER 9 - Study Two: Results
variables was moderate to large and the power of the test to detect a true difference
was high.
A series of regression analyses were used to examine the relationships
between the variables for each group, high and low subjective quality of life.
However, the results were mostly non-significant and therefore will not be
reported in detail. The results for the high subjective quality of life group showed
that neuroticism and approach control significantly predicted subjective quality of
life, however only 15% of the variance in subjective quality of life was accounted
for. The results for the low subjective quality of life group showed that
neuroticism significantly predicted avoidant control, accounting for 23% of the
variance in avoidant control.
However, some interesting trends in the data between the two groups can
be found by examining the correlation matrix in Table 17. In the low subjective
quality of life group the correlation between approach and avoidant control is
stronger, and these variables correlate marginally stronger with subjective quality
of life, than in the high subjective quality of life group. Furthermore, in the low
subjective quality of life group extroversion correlates marginally stronger with
approach control and neuroticism correlates much stronger with avoidant control
than in the high subjective quality of life group.
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CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
CHAPTER 10
10 STUDY TWO: DISCUSSION
10.1 Aim OneThe result of the exploratory factor analyses performed on the Coping
Responses Inventory (Moos, 1993) showed clear support for the approach and
avoidant distinction and some support for the subscales. The approach and
avoidant distinction was supported by two-factor solutions for both the 48 items
and for the eight subscales of the Coping Responses Inventory. These two-factor
solutions demonstrated a distinction in the types of strategies people use to cope
with their difficulties, in that they either approach or acknowledge the problem in
some way, or they avoid or ignore the problem. These two factors are consistent
with the literature (Ebata & Moos, 1991; Herman-Stahl et al., 1995; Roth &
Cohen, 1996) and with the findings from Study One.
A six-factor solution was also found, which provided some support for the
subscales of the Coping Responses Inventory. Three clear factors were evident for
positive reappraisal, problem solving, and seeking guidance/support. Cognitive
avoidance and acceptance or resignation items, with a positive slant, combined to
make an avoidant control factor. Seeking alternative rewards made another factor
with the inclusion of one emotional discharge item, which seems better placed
with these items. The last factor was made up of acceptance and resignation items
with a negative slant, and one emotional discharge item. Interestingly, all of the
items in the logical analysis scale were eliminated in the data reduction process.
These items consistently loaded on a number of the factors, perhaps suggesting
that logical analysis must occur in conjunction with all different types of control or
coping. This six-factor solution also suggests that there are important distinctions
between different types of approach control and one type of avoidant control,
which is consistent with the factor analytic literature on the COPE inventory
(Carver et al., 1989; Finset & Andersson, 2000; Phelps & Jarvis, 1994). Yet,
given that there were only two or three items in many of the factors they were not
adequate to use in the subsequent analysis.
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CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
The two-factor solution for the eight subscales was used in the subsequent
analyses (see Table 13), as it did not contain some of the methodological problems
evident in the two-factor solution for the 48 items; such as an inadequate sample
size, low communalities, and a low percentage of variance explained by the two-
factor solution. Furthermore, each of the eight subscales of the Coping Responses
Inventory had good internal reliability and the means were comparable to those
published in the scale's manual (see Table 12). The approach control factor
included the subscales: logical analysis, positive reappraisal, problem solving and
seeking guidance/support. The avoidant control factor included the subscales:
cognitive avoidance, acceptance or resignation, and emotional discharge. The
factor, seeking alternative rewards, was not included in the final factor solution as
it loaded on both factors, although most strongly on the approach control factor,
which is in contrast to its inclusion in the avoidant coping scale of the Coping
Responses Inventory. The items in the seeking alternative rewards subscale
represent getting on with life, which although it does not specifically address the
specific difficulties it does perhaps acknowledge their existence and the need to
overcome them by having positive experiences. Overall, the approach and
avoidant control scales based on scores for each subscale of the Coping Responses
Inventory appear to be valid and reliable scales, that highlight an important
distinction between various strategies for maintaining perceived control, to use in
the subsequent analyses.
10.2 Aim TwoThe results did not show any differences between the teacher and
comparison samples on any of the variables of interest, subjective quality of life,
approach and avoidant coping, or extroversion and neuroticism. These results
suggest that the stressors that are reported to be associated with teaching
(Churchill, Williamson & Grady, 1996, 1997; Griffith, Steptoe & Cropley, 1999;
Hart & Conn, 1996; Punch & Tuetteman, 1996; Sarros & Sarros, 1990) are not
impacting negatively on teachers' subjective quality of life. Alternatively,
teachers' use of approach and avoidant control may be buffering the impact of
stress on subjective quality of life, as coping has been shown to be related to stress
(Griffith et al., 1999), burnout (Pierce & Molloy, 1990) and psychological distress
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CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
(Punch & Tuetteman, 1996) in teachers. However, teachers' scores on approach
and avoidant coping did not differ from the comparison sample. It could be
concluded that Australian teachers do not experience any greater workplace stress
than that of the general population. However, the finding that teachers
experienced a significantly greater frequency of difficulties and greater difficulty
in the areas of time management and work does not support this conclusion (see
Table 10). Overall, it appears that teachers' workplace stressors may not be
significant enough to defeat the homeostatic maintenance of their subjective
quality of life or to promote a change in their perceived control. Yet, it should be
highlighted that this conclusion is based on a small sample of teachers in Eastern
metropolitan Melbourne, and it is possible that there is response bias in the results
whereby only those teachers who were less stressed had the time and motivation to
participate in the research.
10.3 Aim ThreeGiven that there were no significant differences between the two samples
on any of the variables of interest, the samples were combined to investigate the
relationships between the variables, subjective quality of life, approach and
avoidant control, and extroversion and neuroticism. The mean scores for each of
these variables (see Table 14) were consistent with population norms found in the
literature and the scales' manuals. The mean total subjective quality of life
(satisfaction only) score was 76.49%SM which is within the normative range of
70-80%SM identified in the scales manual and by Cummins' (1995, 1998, 2000)
extensive research. The extroversion (7.15) and neuroticism (4.82) means were
comparable with those in the scale's manual, which reported the mean extroversion
score for females at 7.60 and for males at 6.36 and the mean neuroticism score for
females at 5.90 and males at 4.95. Overall, these results appear to be more
indicative of a normal population than those in Study One, increasing the
generalisability of the analysis of the relationships between the variables.
As in Study One, regression analyses were used to examine the
relationships between the relevant concepts (see Tables 15 and 16). Consistent
with Study One the results provide support for the hypothesis that perceived
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CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
control will improve the prediction of subjective quality of life beyond that
afforded by personality, and that personality will predict perceived control.
The results of the regression analyses showed that with all variables in the
equation, neuroticism and approach control significantly predicted subjective
quality of life, whilst avoidant control approached significance and extroversion
made no significant contribution to the equation. This equation accounted for 33%
of the variance in the subjective quality of life of the combined sample.
Additionally, neuroticism significantly predicted avoidant control and extroversion
marginally but significantly predicted approach control, and extroversion and
neuroticism significantly correlated with each other. By incorporating these
relationships into a model (see Figure 6) a better understanding of the data for
Study Two is provided and comparisons can be made with Study One.
Figure 6: Model of the significant relationships among the variables, neuroticism, extroversion, approach control, avoidant control, and total subjective quality of life (SQOL), in the combined sample, including standardised regression coefficients and correlations.
In some ways this model represents a mix of the models in Study One for
the carer and comparison samples. In Study Two neuroticism predicted subjective
quality of life directly and possibly indirectly via avoidant control, although
avoidant control was only approaching significance in its prediction of subjective
quality of life with all other variables in the equation. This is similar to the carer
sample in Study One except approach control, rather than avoidant control, played
108
-.12.33
-.27
Total SQOL
Approach control
Avoidant Control
ExtroversionNeuroticism
.18.29-.36
CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
the mediating role. Additionally, in Study Two extroversion indirectly predicted
subjective quality of life via approach control. This is similar to the comparison
sample in Study One except extroversion rather than neuroticism predicted
subjective quality of life indirectly via approach control.
A key reason for these differences is probably the different measure of
approach and avoidant control used, which, unlike Study One, has resulted in
avoidant control relating negatively with all other variables except neuroticism,
and it not being significantly correlated with approach control. This finding does
not support the conclusion from Study One and the literature (Roth & Cohen,
1986) that avoidant control is a beneficial coping strategy, and that when
individuals are faced with more stressors, both approach and avoidant control are
useful in maintaining their subjective quality of life. Importantly, any statement in
this regard is likely to be dependent on exactly how avoidant control is measured.
Essentially the results for Study Two show that neuroticism and avoidant
control together have a negative impact on subjective quality of life, whilst
extroversion and approach control together have a positive impact on subjective
quality of life. This conclusion is intuitively sound and is supported by the
literature and the findings of Study One that has shown neuroticism to
significantly and negatively correlate with subjective well-being, and extroversion
to significantly and positively correlate with subjective well-being (Costa &
McCrae, 1980; Francis, 1999; Francis et al., 1998; Lu & Shih, 1997).
Unfortunately, there is little literature to support the conclusions regarding the
relationships between approach and avoidant control and subjective quality of life.
However, it has been shown that depression is associated with low approach
coping, and that high avoidant coping is related to increased dysfunction and
depression, which can be assumed to be indicative of low satisfaction with life
(Billings & Moos, 1984; Ebata & Moos, 1991; Finset & Andersson; Herman-Stahl
et al., 1995; Holahan & Moos, 1990). Such findings are generally consistent with
the proposed model. It is concluded that perceived control improves the prediction
of subjective quality of life beyond that afforded by personality, with the most
significant variables being neuroticism and approach control.
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CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
10.4 Additional analyses The additional analyses, applied after separating the sample into groups
representing high subjective quality of life (greater than 70%SM) and low
subjective quality of life (less than 70%SM), provided some interesting
information about the differences between the groups on the personality and
perceived control variables (see Table 17). Those with high subjective quality of
life had significantly higher approach control and extroversion and significantly
lower neuroticism and avoidant control than those with low subjective quality of
life. This provides further support for the notion that neuroticism and avoidant
control together have a negative impact on subjective quality of life, whilst
extroversion and approach control together have a positive impact on subjective
quality of life. Unfortunately, the regression analyses provided few significant
relationships. This may have been due to low subject numbers and the reduced
range of variance in subjective quality of life, resulting from the creation of high
and low subgroups within the sample, which attenuated the correlations.
However, the low subjective quality of life group did show trends consistent with
the pattern that approach and avoidant control correlated stronger with each other
and with subjective quality of life, and that extroversion correlated stronger with
approach control and neuroticism correlated stronger with avoidant control, than in
the high subjective quality of life group. This provides some support for the
conclusion in Study One, that when homeostasis is challenged the maintenance of
subjective quality of life becomes more complicated.
10.5 SummarySome important conclusions can be drawn from the findings of Study Two.
Firstly, the approach and avoidant dimensions of perceived control have
been supported as a valuable way to understand the structure of the Coping
Responses Inventory, both in terms of its items and its subscales, and the way
people deal with their problems and difficulties in general. There is some
suggestion that approach control could be meaningful if divided into subscales
reflecting positive reappraisal, problem solving and seeking guidance/support.
However, it appears that it fits the data best if these subscales are considered to
110
CHAPTER 10 - Study Two: Discussion
reflect one factor, approach control, which can be used in contrast to the second
factor, avoidant control.
Secondly, the analyses demonstrated no significant differences between the
teacher and comparison samples. This suggests that the stressors reported in the
literature to be associated with teaching are not significant enough to impact
negatively on teachers' subjective quality of life, or to promote change in their
approach and avoidant control. However, it should be highlighted that this
conclusion is based on a small sample of teachers in Eastern metropolitan
Melbourne.
Thirdly, the results of the analyses examining relationships within the
combined teacher and comparison sample, supported the conclusion that
neuroticism and avoidant control together impact negatively on subjective quality
of life, and extroversion and approach control together impact positively on
subjective quality of life. The finding that those with high subjective quality of
life had significantly higher approach control and extroversion, and significantly
lower neuroticism and avoidant control than those with low subjective quality of
life, further supported this conclusion. Still, it is important to note that neuroticism
and approach control were the strongest predictors of subjective quality of life.
Furthermore, there was some indication that when homeostasis is challenged the
maintenance of subjective quality of life becomes more complicated. The
generalisability of these results is supported by mean scores which closely
resembled the population norms in the scales' manuals.
Overall, there is continuing support for the model of personality, perceived
control and subjective quality of life depicted in Figure 2. This may help to
explain how subjective quality of life is maintained, or held under homeostatic
control. However, the support is preliminary and, given the differences between
the samples used in Study One and Study Two, requires further substantiation.
Inclusion of latent constructs for the personality and perceived control variables,
tested via structural equation modelling, may be an important next step.
111
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
CHAPTER 11
11 SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS
Both studies offer some support for a model of subjective quality of life
maintenance that involves personality and perceived control. The model under
consideration proposes that personality plays a dual role in contributing to
subjective quality of life, both directly, and indirectly through perceived control.
Fundamental to this model is the hypothesis that perceived control will improve
the prediction of subjective quality of life beyond that afforded by personality, and
that personality will predict perceived control.
Personality was selected for investigation as it has been consistently shown
in the literature to have a significant relationship with subjective quality of life,
which may help to understand homeostasis. Personality was measured using the
dimensions of extroversion and neuroticism, which were interpreted to reflect
enduring characteristics of emotional instability and sociability, respectively.
Perceived control was selected for investigation as it was indicated in the literature
to potentially be an important psychological process that may play a role in the
relationship between personality and subjective quality of life. Perceived control
was conceptualised, following the findings of the factor analytic research in this
thesis, in terms of approach and avoidant dimensions.
The aim of this thesis was to develop a better understanding of these three
key variables by: 1) investigating the factor structure of perceived control, 2)
investigating the differences between the general population and those whose
subjective quality of life and perceived control may be challenged, and 3)
examining the relationships between the variables.
It has been concluded that perceived control is best understood by dividing
it into approach and avoidant dimensions rather than the initially proposed
primary, secondary and relinquished control strategies. The factor analyses
performed on the two different control and coping scales in Study One and Study
Two have supported this conclusion. Approach control reflects addressing or
112
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
acknowledging the problem in some way and may involve strategies such as
positive reappraisal, problem solving and seeking guidance/support. Avoidant
control reflects avoiding or disregarding the problem and may involve strategies
such as cognitive avoidance, acceptance or resignation and emotional discharge.
Interestingly, in Study One, the measure of avoidant control appeared to be
an adaptive coping strategy as it correlated positively with subjective quality of
life, and negatively with neuroticism. However, in Study Two it appeared to be a
maladaptive coping strategy as it correlated negatively with subjective quality of
life, and positively with neuroticism. This highlights the significant impact that
measurement can have on the understanding of various concepts and more
specifically, the complexity of measuring avoidant control.
Overall, the Coping Responses Inventory (Moos, 1993) used in Study Two,
was developed for the purpose of identifying the use of approach and avoidant
strategies and it appears to be a reasonably valid and reliable tool. With the
exception of the seeking alternative rewards subscale, which loaded on both
approach and avoidant dimensions and thus was excluded from these analyses.
Hence, the approach and avoidant dimensions provided a meaningful
understanding of perceived control, which was used in the subsequent analyses of
differences between samples and of relationships among variables.
Some interesting conclusions were drawn from the differences that were
evident between the carer and comparison samples investigated in Study One. It
was indicated from the results that caring for someone with a mental illness
impacts negatively on caregivers' subjective quality of life, particularly on their
satisfaction with their health and emotional well-being. The carer sample also had
significantly higher neuroticism scores and significantly lower extroversion scores
than the comparison sample. This suggests that the negative impact of caring for
someone with a mental illness is not only evident in subjective quality of life, but
also in differences in carers' personality characteristics, resulting in higher
emotional instability and decreased sociability. Furthermore, there was some
indication that carers had less approach control than the comparison sample,
signifying that carers' belief that they can address their difficulties may be more
113
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
limited. However, there is some question over the representativeness of the
comparison sample in Study One, as their subjective quality of life scores were
placed on the upper end of the normative range and their neuroticism scores were
significantly lower than those in the scale's manual. It is possible that people who
are interested in participating in university research are more satisfied with their
lives and have less emotional instability than those from the general population,
highlighting that some caution should be taken in considering these conclusions.
Whilst there were differences between the two samples used in Study One,
there were no differences between the teacher and comparison samples in Study
Two on any of the subjective quality of life, personality or perceived control
variables. However, the background information revealed that a greater
percentage of the teacher sample identified difficulties with time management and
work than the comparison sample, and that teachers showed a significantly greater
frequency of difficulties. Hence, it was concluded that these workplace stressors
were not significant enough to defeat the homeostatic maintenance of teachers'
subjective quality of life or to promote change in their perceived control.
However, it should again be highlighted that this conclusion is based on a small
sample of teachers in a relatively affluent area of metropolitan Melbourne.
The most consistent results across both studies in the analyses of
relationships amongst the variables, were that perceived control improved the
prediction of subjective quality of life beyond that afforded by personality, and
that personality predicted perceived control. This finding was concordant with the
proposed model. However, it was predominantly based on the personality variable
neuroticism, which negatively contributed to subjective quality of life, and the
perceived control variable approach control, which made a positive contribution.
Some further conclusions, about the maintenance of subjective quality of
life, can also be drawn from the findings in Study One and Study Two by
comparing the model of relationships developed for each sample within these
studies. The three samples used in this research represent three groups of people
with differing levels of subjective quality of life, high normal, normal and low
normal. The developing complexity of the models for these groups as they move
114
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
from high normal, to normal, to low normal demonstrates that the management of
subjective quality of life homeostasis becomes more complicated as it is
challenged.
The comparison sample in Study One represents a group of people with
high normal subjective quality of life (80.68%SM). The model of relationships
between the variables developed for this group is reproduced in Figure 7. This
model was based on the regression equation which found that with all of the
variables in the equation, only approach control significantly predicted subjective
quality of life, accounting for 30% of the variance in subjective of quality life.
Figure 7: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the comparison sample in Study One, representing high normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 5).
The combined sample in Study Two represents a group of people with
normal subjective quality of life (76.49%SM). The model of relationships
between the variables developed for this group is reproduced in Figure 8. This
model was based on the regression equation which found that with all of the
variables in the equation, neuroticism and approach control significantly predicted
subjective quality of life, accounting for 33% of the variance in subjective of
quality life.
115
Neuroticism
Approach Control
Total SQOL
-.18
.44
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
Figure 8: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the combined sample in Study Two, representing normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 6).
The carer sample in Study One represents a group of people with low
normal subjective quality of life (71.37%SM). The model of relationships
between the variables developed for this group is reproduced in Figure 9. This
model was based on the regression equation which found that with all of the
variables in the equation, neuroticism, approach control and avoidant control
significantly predicted subjective quality of life, accounting for 37% of the
variance in subjective of quality life.
Figure 9: Model of the significant relationships among the variables for the carer sample, representing low normal subjective quality of life (reproduction of Figure 3).
116
-.12.33
-.27
Total SQOL
Approach control
Avoidant Control
ExtroversionNeuroticism
.18.29 -.36
.42 .16
.24
Neuroticism
Approach Control
Avoidant Control
Total SQOL
-.24 -.40
CHAPTER 11 - Conclusions
Hence, it can be seen that as the samples move from a homeostatic position
of over-exuberance, to normal, to one of avoiding depression, the personality and
perceived control variables account for more of the variance in subjective quality
of life, and the number of variables that significantly predict it increase. This
indicates that, as the management of subjective quality of life becomes more
difficult, individuals must draw on more processes to maintain their subjective
quality of life. Furthermore, these processes become more important to the
maintenance of subjective quality of life. However, it should be highlighted that
different measures of perceived control were used in the two studies, limiting the
interpretation of these findings somewhat. Nevertheless, the patterns evident do
demonstrate that when subjective quality of life homeostasis is being challenged
the maintenance of it becomes more complicated.
In conclusion, it is clear from the literature and the findings outlined in this
thesis, that perceived control is an important psychological processes to consider
when investigating the relationship between personality and subjective quality of
life, and when trying to understand how subjective quality of life is maintained. In
particular, neuroticism and approach control are indicated as the most important
variables, as they have been shown to predict subjective quality of life consistently
across the samples investigated. In addition, there is compelling evidence to
suggest that subjective quality of life homeostasis becomes more complicated as it
is challenged. Further investigation is needed to support these conclusions. It is
apparent that the workings of the homeostatic system of subjective quality of life,
can be most effectively revealed by studying samples who have a severely
challenged homeostatic system.
117
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Appendices
13 APPENDICES
Appendix A: Information Letter for Questionnaire 1
Appendix B: Questionnaire 1
Appendix C: Information Letter for Questionnaire 2
Appendix D: Questionnaire 2
Appendix E: Scales and Items of the Coping Responses Inventory
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