IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v71y2010i10p1890-1895.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measurement challenges of informal caregiving: A novel measurement method applied to a cohort of palliative care patients

Author

Listed:
  • Dumont, Serge
  • Jacobs, Philip
  • Turcotte, Véronique
  • Anderson, Donna
  • Harel, François

Abstract

Informal caregiving is a complex concept, and inconsistencies are found in the literature regarding how to measure it. The differences in tasks included in the definition of caregiving, as well as the different methods used to measure caregiving time may explain the huge variations in results found in the literature. The current paper aimed to lay out the challenges of how to calculate the time spent by informal caregivers on providing care and assistance to an ill person at home. It also proposes a method for measuring informal caregiving time, which attempts to distinguish between "normal" activities and "caregiving" activities. The proposed measurement method is then applied to a cohort of informal caregivers of palliative care patients. The illustration study revealed that this method brought advantages comparatively to other methods, and that persisting challenges remain in measuring informal caregiving time. We conclude that, the estimate of time spent caregiving for palliative care patients may be useful in guiding support programs for the families taking care of a loved one at home during the palliative phase of care.

Suggested Citation

  • Dumont, Serge & Jacobs, Philip & Turcotte, Véronique & Anderson, Donna & Harel, François, 2010. "Measurement challenges of informal caregiving: A novel measurement method applied to a cohort of palliative care patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(10), pages 1890-1895, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:10:p:1890-1895
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(10)00610-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Severens, Johan L. & Mulder, Jan & Laheij, Robert J. F. & Verbeek, André L. M., 2000. "Precision and accuracy in measuring absence from work as a basis for calculating productivity costs in The Netherlands," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 243-249, July.
    2. van den Berg, Bernard & Brouwer, Werner & van Exel, Job & Koopmanschap, Marc & van den Bos, Geertrudis A.M. & Rutten, Frans, 2006. "Economic valuation of informal care: Lessons from the application of the opportunity costs and proxy good methods," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 835-845, February.
    3. Van Houtven, Courtney Harold & Norton, Edward C., 2004. "Informal care and health care use of older adults," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 1159-1180, November.
    4. Bernard Berg & Werner Brouwer & Marc Koopmanschap, 2004. "Economic valuation of informal care," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 5(1), pages 36-45, February.
    5. Wimo, Anders & von Strauss, Eva & Nordberg, Gunilla & Sassi, Franco & Johansson, Lennarth, 2002. "Time spent on informal and formal care giving for persons with dementia in Sweden," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 255-268, September.
    6. Bernard van den Berg & Pol Spauwen, 2006. "Measurement of informal care: an empirical study into the valid measurement of time spent on informal caregiving," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(5), pages 447-460, May.
    7. Ken Wright, 1987. "The economics of informal care of the elderly," Working Papers 023chedp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    8. Juster, F Thomas & Stafford, Frank P, 1991. "The Allocation of Time: Empirical Findings, Behavioral Models, and Problems of Measurement," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 471-522, June.
    9. Michael J. Moore & Carolyn W. Zhu & Elizabeth C. Clipp, 2001. "Informal Costs of Dementia Care," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 56(4), pages 219-228.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Torbica, Aleksandra & Calciolari, Stefano & Fattore, Giovanni, 2015. "Does informal care impact utilization of healthcare services? Evidence from a longitudinal study of stroke patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 29-38.
    2. Urwin, Sean & Lau, Yiu-Shing & Grande, Gunn & Sutton, Matt, 2021. "The extent and predictors of discrepancy between provider and recipient reports of informal caregiving," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hassink, Wolter H.J. & Van den Berg, Bernard, 2011. "Time-bound opportunity costs of informal care: Consequences for access to professional care, caregiver support, and labour supply estimates," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(10), pages 1508-1516.
    2. Urwin, Sean & Lau, Yiu-Shing & Grande, Gunn & Sutton, Matt, 2021. "The extent and predictors of discrepancy between provider and recipient reports of informal caregiving," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    3. Diana Albrecht & Tanja Wollensak & Christian Ernst & Clemens Becker & Martin Hautzinger & Klaus Pfeiffer, 2016. "Costs of informal care in a sample of German geriatric stroke survivors," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 49-61, March.
    4. Torbica, Aleksandra & Calciolari, Stefano & Fattore, Giovanni, 2015. "Does informal care impact utilization of healthcare services? Evidence from a longitudinal study of stroke patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 29-38.
    5. Luz Peña-Longobardo & Juan Oliva-Moreno, 2015. "Economic valuation and determinants of informal care to people with Alzheimer’s disease," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(5), pages 507-515, June.
    6. Lena Flyckt & Anna Löthman & Leif Jörgensen & Anders Rylander & Thomas Koernig, 2013. "Burden of informal care giving to patients with psychoses: A descriptive and methodological study," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 59(2), pages 137-146, March.
    7. David C. Grabowski & Edward C. Norton & Courtney H. Van Houtven, 2012. "Informal Care," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 30, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Rapp, Thomas & Grand, Alain & Cantet, Christelle & Andrieu, Sandrine & Coley, Nicola & Portet, Florence & Vellas, Bruno, 2011. "Public financial support receipt and non-medical resource utilization in Alzheimer's disease results from the PLASA study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(8), pages 1310-1316, April.
    9. Norton, E.C., 2016. "Health and Long-Term Care," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 951-989, Elsevier.
    10. Riewpaiboon, Arthorn & Riewpaiboon, Wachara & Ponsoongnern, Kanyarat & Van den Berg, Bernard, 2009. "Economic valuation of informal care in Asia: A case study of care for disabled stroke survivors in Thailand," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 648-653, August.
    11. Scott D. Grosse & Jamison Pike & Rieza Soelaeman & J. Mick Tilford, 2019. "Quantifying Family Spillover Effects in Economic Evaluations: Measurement and Valuation of Informal Care Time," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 461-473, April.
    12. Sean Urwin & Yiu-Shing Lau & Gunn Grande & Matt Sutton, 2021. "The Challenges of Measuring Informal Care Time: A Review of the Literature," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 39(11), pages 1209-1223, November.
    13. Bernard van den Berg & Pol Spauwen, 2006. "Measurement of informal care: an empirical study into the valid measurement of time spent on informal caregiving," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(5), pages 447-460, May.
    14. van den Berg, Bernard & Brouwer, Werner & van Exel, Job & Koopmanschap, Marc & van den Bos, Geertrudis A.M. & Rutten, Frans, 2006. "Economic valuation of informal care: Lessons from the application of the opportunity costs and proxy good methods," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 835-845, February.
    15. Juan Oliva-Moreno & Luz María Peña-Longobardo & Leticia García-Mochón & María del Río Lozano & Isabel Mosquera Metcalfe & María del Mar García-Calvente, 2019. "The economic value of time of informal care and its determinants (The CUIDARSE Study)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-15, May.
    16. Alain Paraponaris & Bérengère Davin & Pierre Verger, 2012. "Formal and informal care for disabled elderly living in the community: an appraisal of French care composition and costs," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 13(3), pages 327-336, June.
    17. Bauer, Jan Michael & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2015. "Impacts of Informal Caregiving on Caregiver Employment, Health, and Family," IZA Discussion Papers 8851, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. van den Berg, Bernard & Fiebig, Denzil G. & Hall, Jane, 2014. "Well-being losses due to care-giving," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 123-131.
    19. Bernard van den Berg & Ada Ferrer‐i‐Carbonell, 2007. "Monetary valuation of informal care: the well‐being valuation method," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(11), pages 1227-1244, November.
    20. McDonald, Rebecca & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2018. "The Shadow Prices of Voluntary Caregiving: Using Panel Data of Well-Being to Estimate the Cost of Informal Care," IZA Discussion Papers 11545, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:71:y:2010:i:10:p:1890-1895. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.