Hope and Learned Resourcefulness Among Parents of Disabled Children

Purpose:  The aim of this reseach was to determine the hope and learned resorcefulness levels among parents of disabled children.

Methods:  105 parents of disabled children in a school for disabled children in Ankara were included in the study in March 2003. Herth Hope Scale (HHS) and Rosenbaum’s Learned Resourcefulness Scale (RLRS) were used to collect the data. Descriptive statistics, Student’s t test, Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskall Wallis Variance Analysis, Spearman Correlation were used to analyze tha data in SPSS program. In the resliability analysis, cronbach’s alpha was 0.90 for HHS, cronbach’s alpha was 0.82 in RLRS.

Results:  The mean age of parents was 33.59± 6.01 years. 50.5% of children had a neurological disease. The mean disease duration was 7± 4.7038 years. The mean HHS score was 71.72± 14.848 and mean RLRS score was 69.49± 9.791. The mean HHS score was statistically higher than that of female parents (z=2.028, p=0.043). Hope scores didn’t differ with parent’s social support, parent’s and spouse’s education level, child congenital disease and child diagnosis (p>0.05). RLRS scores didn’t differ with parent’s gender, parent’s social support, parent’s and spouse’s education level, child’s congenital disease and child’s diagnosis (p>0.05). There was a statistically significant positive correlation between HHS scores and RLRS scores (rho=0.85, p<0.001).

Conclusion: This research showed that hope and learned resourcefulness levels of parents of disabled children were above middle level. Male parents’  hope scores were higher than those of female parents. Defining and supporting parents who have problems during nursing care process will provide an uninterrrupted adaptation process and positive care outcomes.