Studying the Daily Lives of Couples Coping with Breast Cancer

乳腺癌(BC)是全世界女性中最常见的癌症。美国女性一生中有1/8的几率会患上BC。尽管如此，自1990年以来，不列颠哥伦比亚省的死亡率一直在稳步下降，女性患上这种疾病的存活时间更长。因此，除了降低死亡率之外，卫生保健专业人员还面临着一系列新的挑战：帮助BC患者、幸存者及其家人应对癌症体验。BC诊断和治疗的效果发生在人际环境中。最近的研究证明，BC的诊断和治疗会影响患者的配偶/伴侣以及夫妻关系的正常运作。然而，这项研究的大部分涉及全球、横断面评估，这可能会混淆我们对人际关系过程的理解。此外，这项研究通常依赖于患者及其配偶/伴侣的回顾报告。回顾报告有几个问题，包括与同时存在的情绪和/或心理调整相关的系统性回忆偏差。为了解决这些问题，并捕捉“当下”的行为和情绪，健康研究人员开始使用日记设计来评估内科患者的日常功能。在同一项研究中，没有一项研究集中于BC患者及其配偶/伴侣。一个可能的原因是，将日记方法应用于患有癌症的夫妇的可行性尚不清楚。该项目的主要目的是评估一种电子每日日记方法的可行性，用于BC患者及其配偶/伴侣的研究。在手术后的几周内，BC患者和他们的配偶/伴侣将完成一系列问卷调查。然后，连续10个晚上，BC患者及其配偶/伴侣将通过个人数字助理(PDA)完成调查，评估他们的日常经历、情绪和社会支持过程。这种电子日记方法的可行性将通过同意参与研究的夫妇的百分比和每晚完成基于PDA的调查的参与夫妇的百分比来评估。电子日记方法也将被用来检验两个针对患有BC的夫妇的二元假设。第一个研究集中在感知和接受支持对BC患者及其配偶/伴侣日常适应的影响。第二个重点是BC患者与他们的配偶/伴侣之间的日常情感传递。

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer among women worldwide. American women have a 1 in 8 lifetime probability of developing BC. Nevertheless, death rates from BC have steadily decreased since 1990 and women are surviving longer with the disease. Thus, health care professionals face a new set of challenges beyond decreasing mortality: helping BC patients, survivors, and their family members cope with the cancer experience. The effects of BC diagnosis and treatment occur in an interpersonal context. Recent research has documented that BC diagnosis and treatment affect the patient's spouse/partner as well as the couple's relationship functioning. However, most of this research has involved global, cross-sectional assessments that can obfuscate our understanding of interpersonal processes. In addition, this research has usually relied on retrospective reports by both patients and their spouses/partners. There are several problems with retrospective reports, including systematic recall biases associated with concurrent mood and/or psychological adjustment. To address these problems, and to capture behavior and mood "in the moment," health researchers are beginning to use diary designs to assess the daily functioning of medical patients. None of this research has focused on BC patients and their spouses/ partners in the same study. One likely reason for this is the unknown feasibility of applying a diary methodology to couples coping with cancer. The primary purpose of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of an electronic daily diary methodology for research with BC patients and their spouses/partners. Within a few weeks after surgery, BC patients and their spouses/partners will complete a battery of questionnaires. Then, for 10 consecutive nights, BC patients and their spouses/ partners will complete surveys via personal digital assistants (PDAs) that assess their daily experiences, mood, and social support processes. Feasibility of this electronic diary methodology will be evaluated in terms of the percentage of couples who agree to participate in the study and the percentage of participating couples who complete the PDA-based survey each night. The electronic diary methodology will also be used to test two dyadic hypotheses for couples coping with BC. The first focuses on the effect of perceived and received support on the daily adjustment of BC patients and their spouses/partners. The second focuses on day-to-day transmission of emotion between BC patients and their spouses/partners.