earticle

영어

This study aimed to explore the moderating effect of social support resources on the life satisfaction and caregiving burden of family caregivers taking care of the elderly in long-term care services. The study participants were selected from among the family caregivers utilizing 30 home care centers in Seoul, Korea. Of the candidates who agreed to participate in the study, 250 caregivers who had supported the elderly at home for at least 6 months were selected. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS ver. 21.0. The study findings were as follows. First, the whole family caregivers’ caregiving burden of family caregivers was found to be slightly higher than the median value. More specifically, the physical burden was the heaviest, followed by the family relationship burden, the social activity burden, the emotional burden, and the financial burden. Social support resources and life satisfaction were found to be a little bit higher than the median value. Second, the variables that statistically significantly increased life satisfaction, starting with the strongest effect, were a lower psycho emotional burden, greater informational support resources, a lower economical burden, greater emotional support, a younger caregiver age, a higher monthly income, and a shorter care period. Third, informational support resources were found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between the support burden and life satisfaction. The more the participants used the informational support resource subcategory of the social support resources, the narrower the life satisfaction decrease, even though the caregivers felt a support burden. Informational support resources appear to have a statistically significant buffering effect.