letters home

March 5, 2014

Mr. Mark J. Roberts

111 Broadway

New York, NY 11004

Dear Mr. Roberts,

Three months ago, I was tasked to study the gender variability on the perceived coping and health- related quality of life among post hospitalized stroke patients at San Pedro Hospital. This research paper is intended to determine any gender variability on the perceived coping and health-related quality of life among post hospitalized stroke patients at San Pedro Hospital-Physical Therapy Clinic. Coping Mechanisms consists of confrontive, distancing, self-controlling, seeking social support, accepting responsibility escape-avoidance, planful problem solving, and positive reappraisal. On the other hand, the Health Related Quality of Life takes account of physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual domains. The participants of this research paper are the post stroke patients admitted at San Pedro Hospital for Physical Therapy rehabilitation. This non experimental research study was descriptively-based in that it sought to capture what people think and feel and how they behaved in their naturalistic environments. An eligibility criteria was created to imposed the type of population under study. The respondents meeting the criteria were divided into 2 strata based on gender, male and female. Coping mechanisms was assessed via the Ways of Coping Questionnaire developed by Susan Folkman and Richard S. Lazarus in 1988 containing 24 coping statements. The Stroke HRQOL form is patterned after the TACQOL generic instrument designed for self-reported Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) assessment. Questionnaires were issued to a total of thirty (30) respondents using quota and purposive sampling. From the data gathered from the sample, the mean distribution, standard deviation, independent t-tests, and Pearson r correlation were employed. Findings show that the coping mechanisms that show the highest registered means among the others and are regularly adopted by females and males are positive reappraisal and planful problem solving, respectively. Unanimously, the coping mechanism that shows the lowest registered mean among the others is “Distancing” for both females and males. Among females and males, the social domain is occasionally affected by the stroke condition registering the highest mean, whereas the mental and the spiritual domains are least affected. There was no significant relationship between gender variability and coping mechanisms. No statistically significant gender differences existed for overall and specific domains of the HRQOL. The co relational analysis between the perceptions of coping mechanisms and HRQOL among the respondents shows that there is a significant correlation between the planful problem solving as a coping mechanism to social, emotional, and spiritual domains of the HRQOL. Significant correlations also exist between spiritual domain and the following coping mechanisms: positive reappraisal and accepting responsibility. Confrontive as a coping mechanism also has significant correlation to the physical domain. Correlational analysis between the perception of coping mechanism and HRQOL shows that among females, there are significant correlations between confrontive coping mechanism and emotional domain, planful problem solving and spiritual domain positive reappraisal and spiritual domain. Among males, there are significant correlations between escape-avoidance and physical domain, accepting responsibility and spiritual domain and planful problem solving and emotional domain.

Best regards,

Sara Anderson