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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common, progressive, disabling disease that effects millions of people worldwide. COPD is costly to clients, families, healthcare providers, and health delivery systems. Declining physical function is a hallmark of COPD. The purpose of these secondary analyses was to examine associations between the coping resources of mastery and perceived social support and participation in daily activities among people with COPD.
Methods:
Mastery, a sense of control, is a personal coping resource, and was measured by the Mastery Scale (Pearlin & Schooler, 1978). Perceived social support, an environmental coping resource, was measured by the Personal Resources Questionnaire 85-Part II (PRQ85-II; Weinert, 1987). Daily activities were assessed with the Functional Performance Inventory-Short Form (FPI-SF; Leidy, 1999). The instrument has six subscales (body care, maintaining the household, physical exercise, recreation, spiritual activities, and social interactions) all of which were included in these analyses. Bivariate analyses between mastery, perceived social support, and each of FPI-SF subscales were calculated. T tests compared the FPI-SF subscale scores of those with high and low mastery and high and low perceived social support (dichotomized at the median for both variables).
Results:
Participants in the original study (n = 119, mean age = 68 years) were predominately male (53%) and married (60%). The mean measure of COPD severity indicated moderate pulmonary disease. In the bivariate analyses, higher mastery scores ( indicating greater sense of control) were associated with greater function in the areas of body care, maintaining the household, physical exercise, recreation, and social interaction (p < .05 for all analyses). There was no association between mastery and spiritual activities. Greater perceived social support was associated with spiritual activities and social interaction only. T test analysis showed that those with higher mastery scores had higher scores for body care, maintaining the household, physical exercise, recreation and social activities. There was no difference in the scores for spiritual activities. Participants with higher perceived social support had higher scores on all six subscales of the FPI-SF (p < .05 for all analyses).
Conclusion:
The activities of personal care, maintaining a household, physical exercise, recreation and social interactions were favorably influenced by participants’ increased sense of mastery. In the bivariate analyses, only social interaction was associated with both mastery and perceived social support (and the association was stronger with perceived social support). The bivariate and t test analyses for perceived social support showed different patterns of statistically significant results. Personal and environmental coping resources are distinct factors to consider in the care of clients with COPD. Strategies that increase clients’ sense of mastery and perception of social support may enhance their daily activities.