INFORMAL CAREGIVERS: ONLINE AND OFFLINE SUPPORT

The main objective of this paper is to understand what online and offline resources mobilize informal caregivers to consolidate their social support. The research involved the application of a set of instruments for the collection of data: socio-demographic questionnaire; Informal Caregiver Burden Assessment Questionnaire (to evaluate the physical, emotional and social overload of the informal caregiver); questionnaire assessing the role of the Internet in the life of informal caregivers. The empirical study was operationalized in a quantitative methodological strategy using an online questionnaire survey. The quantitative methodology allows analyzing the results obtained according to the variables and working hypotheses. For the analysis and treatment of the data we used the software Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 23.0 and followed the statistical analysis descriptive and inferential. The study was carried out with a sample of 113 participants, of whom 101 were female (89.4%) and 12 were male (10.6%), aged between 23 and 71 years. ages of 47.75 years (SD = 10.701). The results show that there are statistically significant differences in family support and perception of mechanisms of efficacy and control, as well as the fact that the Internet can help informal caregivers to combat loneliness. These results allow us to conclude that participants who claim to have greater family support are those who consider that the Internet does not combat loneliness. Respondents who say they have greater mechanisms of effectiveness and control are those who say that the Internet can combat loneliness.