Identifying latent classes of parents of children with hematological
malignancies with respect to caregiving ability: a latent class analysis
Abstract
Objectives: This study aimed to identify unobserved subgroups of parents
of children with hematological malignancies with respect to caregiving
ability and examine the associations of the latent class membership with
individual characteristics. Methods: A total of 392 parents of children
with hematological malignancies in China were surveyed with the
Hematologic Malignancies’ Family Caregiver Skills Scale and a
study-specific demographic information questionnaire. Latent class
analysis(LCA) was applied to identify latent classes of parents based on
caregiving ability measures. Multinomial logistic regression model was
used to investigate the associations of socio-demographic and clinical
characteristics with the latent class membership. Results: Results from
the LCA suggested a 3-class solution: Class 1-“high caregiving
ability” class(n=131, 33.4%), Class 2-“medium caregiving ability”
class(n=170,43.4%), and Class 3-“low caregiving ability” class(n=91,
23.2%). Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, such as having
lower level of education, being married, having higher household income,
more daily caregiving time, and having older children, as well as
children not diagnosed with leukemia, had significantly larger odds of
being classified in Class 1 than in Class 3. When comparing Class 2 with
Class 3, the findings remained basically unchanged except that the
effect of gender of parent became statistically significant, and the
effect of diagnosis of children became insignificant. Conclusion: There
existed three distinct priori unknown classes of parents of children
with hematological malignancies in regard to caregiving ability. The
class membership was significantly associated with parent’s
socio-demographics and child’s clinical measures. These findings may be
helpful in the development of personalized caregiving ability
interventions.