Dissertation Abstract: Carol Decker

Research has shown that adolescents with cancer (AWC) face treatment that is complex, invasive, and onerous. Coming during a time with major developmental changes, it brings the potential of making high demands on the coping capacity of these adolescents. This dissertation analyzed information on coping in AWC to determine the best coping model, analyzed the psychometric properties of the measures used with this population, explored gender and age differences for each of the measures of social support, family environment and coping, and investigated the strength of the relationship of social support and family environment to coping in AWC using data from two Adolescent Resilience Models studies by Joan Haase, PhD, RN. For the coping measure (Jalowiec Coping Scale-Revised), factor analysis, item analysis and Chronbach’s alpha resulted in a two-dimensional scale. These two dimensions, active and avoidant coping, were used in the subsequent analyses for this study. All the instruments demonstrated adequate psychometrics. Using Multivariate Analysis of Variance, gender differences were significant for perceived social support from friends only with female AWC reporting significantly higher levels of support from friends than the males. There were no age group differences found for any of the variables. None of the social support or family environment variables were significantly related to either coping dimension. Based on these research findings, additional research studies on social support, family environment and coping for AWC are needed to understand the relationships among these variables.