The Impact of Social Resources on the Alzheimer's Disease Caregiving Experience

Abstract

Research that has examined the linkages between social resources and health out-comes has been hindered by a lack of clarity in the conceptualizations of key social resources such as social ties and social support. This article presents evidence that social ties and social support are separate constructs and should be treated as such. In a study of 203 family caregivers, measures of social resources were only moderately to weakly intercorrelated. The social resource measures behaved differently as predictors of caregiver burden, physical well-being, and emotional well-being in a path analysis, and the subjective perception of adequacy of social ties was more germane to explaining health outcomes than was an objective number of social ties. Researchers must clearly and consistently operationally define measures used to examine relationships between social resources and health outcomes if these enigmatic connections are to be fully understood.