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.