JIANG Sisi,TAO Jingrui,WU Yanhong, et al. Latent class analysis of caregiver burden in parents of children with autism[J]. JOURNAL OF WEZHOU MEDICAL UNIVERSITY, 2024, 54(6): 438-445.
Abstract：Objective: To explore the latent classes of caregiver burden in parents of children with autism and analyze the differences in demography and family resilience. Methods: Parents of children with autism who were trained in 5 autism rehabilitation institutions in Wenzhou and Ningbo cities of Zhejiang province from June to August in 2021 were selected by convenience sampling method. Basic information questionnaire, family resilience assessment scale and Zarit caregiver burden interview were used for investigation. Latent class analysis was used to explore the latent classes of caregiver burden in parents of children with autism. Univariate analysis and ordinal and multinominal logistic regression were used to identify the predictors of the latent classes.Results: A total of 260 returned questionnaires (out of the 280) were valid, with an effective response rate of 92.86%. The caregiver burden among parents of children with autism could be divided into 3 latent classes,i.e., low-burden group (35.8%), medium-burden group (41.5%), and high-burden group (22.7%). Ordinal and multinominal Logistic regression outputs demonstrated that parents who were older (OR=1.050, 95%CI=0.009-0.089, P=0.016), had 3-6 h (OR=2.098, 95%CI=0.188-1.294, P=0.009) and >6 h (OR=2.667, 95%CI=0.211-1.752, P=0.013) rehabilitation training and bore >60% percentage of rehabilitation costs (OR=2.886, 95%CI=0.158-1.963, P=0.021) tended to be in the high-burden group, while parents who had higher scores of family resilience were less likely to be in the high-burden group (OR=0.954, 95%CI=-0.062-0.031, P<0.001).Conclusion: The caregiver burden in parents of children with autism are heterogeneous and can be divides into 3 latent classes. The caregivers of older age, with longer rehabilitation training, higher rehabilitation costs and lower family resilience had higher caregiver burden. Medical staff should pay attention to those caregivers with older age and higher rehabilitation training input, and try to help families build positive belief and develop coping skills to overcome adversity so as to reduce caregiver burden.
