Family coping with childhood cancer

Previous studies using nonstandardized instruments measuring coping with childhood cancer, suggested families coped well. The concepts of encapsulation and at-risk behaviors were derived from this literature as coping strategies. Encapsulation strategies normalize the experience and control the meaning of the illness. At-risk strategies include complying with treatment and protecting the child. Three purposes of this paper are (a) describe parents' coping in 45 families whose child has cancer using a standardized instrument (CHIP), (b) compare the findings from this study with previous studies, and (c) explore the concepts of encapsulation and at-risk as family coping strategies using selected items on the CHIP. Internal reliabilities ranged from .71 to .79 on the CHIP's three scales. In this study, correlational and descriptive analysis were conducted. The CHIP's psychometric properties in this study ranged from .76 to .84. The newly developed scales of encapsulation and at-risk had internal reliabilities of .74, .74, .74, and .46 for the fathers and mothers. Using the CHIP scales parents' coping was similar to other samples in which the CHIP was used. With the exception of the mothers' at-risk scale, a cohesive family coping measure was evidenced by the acceptable internal reliabilities on the newly developed scales. Further development of the encapsulation scale will provide a family coping measure useful in testing conceptually based nursing interventions.