To evaluate the situation of family carers of elderly people in relation to the (non-)existence, (non-)familiarity, (non-)availability, (non-)use and (non-)acceptability of supporting services.
Using the data from 1,000 care situations in each of the core countries, multivariate data analyses are carried out. The respective causal models consist of three types of variables that have to be measured and put in relation to each other:
The analysis of the qualitative data (text-memos, interview-transcriptions) will follow a common strategy. Using the method of qualitative content analysis, a category system will be developed that allows different researchers to structure and to cluster the openly described experience, attitudes, opinions of family carers with both their caring roles and any services, existent or not, available or not, used or not. The same goes for the data from the telephone interviews with service providers. Nevertheless the system is flexible enough to clarify family carers' needs from their own perspectives, and, independently, from already existing services. Moreover, this strategy allows a future comparison between different national data sets, by quantifying qualitative data in a triangulation process. This is important to add the necessary country specific background data for the European Data Analysis (WP 9).
* Germany (Bremen) will conduct the socio-economic evaluation, which is described in WP 9
German
Italian