The latent classes of parents of children with hematological malignancies
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that used the LCA to identify unobserved subpopulations/classes of parents of children with hematological malignancies in China. Parents in the study were classified into 3 distinct a priori unknown classes regarding to caregiving ability measured by HMFCGSS: Class 1-”high caregiving ability” class; Class 2-”medium caregiving ability” class; and Class 3-”low caregiving ability class”. Class 1 accounted for 33.4% (n=131) of the sample. The members in Class 1 had a medium level of DCA and high levels of the other five domains. Class 2 accounted for 43.4% (n=170) of the sample. Overall, the parents in Class 2 had a medium level of DCA, EMA, ASR and BCN, and relatively high levels of GAC and PCS. Class 3 accounted for 23.2% (n=91) of the sample. Parents in Class 3 had a medium level of GAC and low levels of all the other domains. For parents in the “low caregiving ability” class, caring for children with hematological malignancies was really challenging.