Expressive Writing as an Emotion Regulation Intervention for Improving Cancer Caregiver and Patient Health

该奖项作为美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）项目的一部分提供，并得到SBE社会心理学项目的支持。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在斯坦福大学詹姆斯·格罗斯博士的赞助下，这项博士后奖学金支持一位早期职业科学家研究情绪调节在照顾癌症患者中的作用。护理人员通过每天提供情感、经济和医疗支持，在癌症护理和治疗中发挥着关键作用。随着癌症病例的增加以及门诊和家庭癌症护理的发展，癌症护理人员的需求只会继续增加。大量研究表明，护理人员管理护理需求的方式可以深刻地影响他们和患者的健康。该项目旨在通过加强护理人员更健康的情绪调节来改善癌症护理人员和患者的健康。在此过程中，它将使用具有全国代表性的样本，这将增加其研究结果的普遍性，以广泛的护理人员和患者。它还将使用一种成熟且低成本的情绪调节干预，表达性写作（EW），这将最终为更容易获得的癌症护理干预铺平道路。尽管情绪调节对癌症护理者和患者的健康具有重要意义，但其在癌症护理中的作用仍未得到充分研究。本项目旨在阐明情绪调节在癌症护理中的作用，并加强照顾者的健康情绪调节，以改善照顾者和患者的健康。它将测试三个目标：目标1将评估照顾者情绪调节与照顾者患者健康之间的关系；目的2将评估情绪调节干预（表达性写作）对护理者和患者健康的影响；目的3确定照顾者情绪调节的变化是否解释干预后和3个月后的健康影响。这些目标将在来自三个大型在线小组的500名男性和女性乳腺癌护理人员及其（非转移性）患者的全国代表性样本中进行测试。使用的方法将包括情绪调节、健康和健康相关协变量的在线调查措施，以及在线两组随机对照试验（EW与匹配对照条件）。研究结果将帮助我们理解(1)情绪调节在癌症护理中的潜在关键作用，与癌症护理者的EW是否能改善(2)护理者和(3)患者的健康，以及(4)情绪调节是否解释了为什么EW可以改善健康。这项研究还为社会心理学和情感科学提供了更广泛的见解，让我们了解了在护理环境中情绪调节是如何运作的，以及改变情绪调节的最有效方法是什么。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and supported by SBE's Social Psychology program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. James Gross at Stanford University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the role of emotion regulation in caregiving for cancer patients. Caregivers play a critical role in cancer care and treatment by providing emotional, financial, and medical support on a daily basis. With the growing rise in cancer cases and movement towards cancer care in outpatient and home settings, cancer caregivers' demands only continue to increase. Substantial research suggests that the ways in which caregivers manage the demands of caregiving can profoundly impact their health and patient's health. This project seeks to improve cancer caregiver and patient health by enhancing healthier emotion regulation in caregivers. In doing so, it will use a nationally representative sample, which will increase the generalizability of its findings to a wide range of caregivers and patients. It will also use a well-established and low-cost emotion regulation intervention, Expressive Writing (EW), which will ultimately pave the way for more accessible cancer caregiver interventions.Despite the important implications of emotion regulation for the health of cancer caregivers and patients, its role in cancer caregiving remains largely unstudied. This project seeks to elucidate the role of emotion regulation in cancer caregiving and to enhance healthy emotion regulation in caregivers to improve caregiver and patient health. It will test three aims: Aim 1 will assess the association between caregiver emotion regulation and caregiver patient health; Aim 2 will assess the impact of an emotion regulation intervention (Expressive Writing; EW) on caregiver and patient health; and Aim 3 determine whether changes in caregiver emotion regulation explain EW's health impacts post-intervention, and 3 months later. These aims will be tested in a nationally representative sample of 500 male and female breast cancer caregivers and their (non-metastatic) patients from three large online panels. The methods used will include online survey measures of emotion regulation, health, and health-relevant covariates, as well as an online 2-group randomized controlled trial (EW vs. matched controlled condition). Findings will inform our understanding of (1) the potentially critical role of emotion regulation in cancer caregiving, whether EW with cancer caregivers improves the health of (2) caregivers and (3) patients, and whether (4) emotion regulation explains why EW may improve health. This research also holds broader insights for social psychology and affective science by informing our understanding of how emotion regulation operates within caregiving contexts and what the most effective ways for changing emotion regulation are.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.