Military Families with Chronically Ill Children: A Needs Assessment.
Abstract
Military families with chronically ill children experience not only the stressors of caring for their chronically ill child, but must also contend with the rigors of military life. Stressors involved in caring for a chronically ill child include continuous care demands, marital distress and financial burdens. Stressors of military life include geographic mobility, spousal absence and working within the military system. Many programs utilizing the principles of case management have successfully been implemented within the civilian sector in order to minimize the stressors of families with chronically ill children. The purpose of this project was to design a Needs Assessment Questionnaire in order to determine the needs military families caring for their chronically ill children experience in providing and obtaining care for their child and to determine if case management services would be helpful in meeting these needs. In order to provide the structural skeleton necessary in developing the questionnaire, a conceptual framework was designed taking the stressors of a family caring for a chronically ill child and combining these with the stressors of military life. The instrument was found to have both content validity and face validity. Experts were not only asked to verify content validity but were also asked to evaluate the conceptual framework developed. Results and responses indicate filter refinement of the conceptual framework is needed. Families were asked to provide comments and suggestions regarding the questionnaire in addition to verifying face validity. These responses and suggestions will be used in revising and improving the Needs Assessment Questionnaire in the future.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA295065
Entities
People
- Susan D. Morgan
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology