Parental Stress from Caring for Children with Disabilities

Abstract

Holyroyd developed the QRS (Questionnaire on Resources and Stress), which measured parents' stress from caring for their children with disabilities. In the present article, we present two statistical studies using our version of the short form of the QRS, which consists of 55 items on 11 scales. The scales are Parental Affliction, Pessimism about Child Development, Overprotection/Dependency, Anxiety about the Future of the Child, Social Isolation, Burden for Members of the Family, Financial Problems, Lack of Family Integration, Intellectual Incapacitation, Physical Incapacitation, and Need for the Care of the Child. (1) Cronbach's α reliability coefficients were computed for the 11 scales. The α coefficient ranged from 0.329 (Social Isolation) to 0.817 (Anxiety about the Future of the Child). (2) We compared the stress of 378 parents who had children with disabilities (mean age: 13.50 years old) and 662 parents who had children without disabilities (mean age: 8.20 years old) in Japan. The former showed higher stress than the latter on all 11 scales. (3) We also compared the stress of 137 Scottish parents who had children with disabilities (mean age: 11.45 years old) and the 378 Japanese parents who had children with disabilities (mean age: 13.50 years old). The former showed higher stress than the latter on 5 of the scales. However, the results were reversed on 2 scales, and there was no difference between the two groups of parents on 4 scales.