Wellbeing perception of institutional caregivers working for people with disabilities: Use of Subjective Happiness Scale and Satisfaction with Life Scale analyses

Little scientific research has focused on the measure of how positive wellbeing of people caring for people with disabilities. The purposes of the present study are to explore the wellbeing perception and its determinants of caregivers who caring for people with disability. We employed a cross-sectional, self-administrative structured questionnaire survey to recruit 88 caregivers in this study. Those caregivers were defined as staff who working in residential care or day care services for people with disabilities in social welfare settings. Wellbeing was measured using two scales which included Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), and Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). The mean score of SHS and SWLS were 4.9 +/- 1.0 (range = 1.3-6.8) and 4.6 +/- 0.9 (range = 1.6-6.0). There were 42.5% respondents expressed they were happy and 31.0% were slightly happy, 31.0% felt satisfied with life and 39.3% reported they were slightly satisfied while 20.2% were slightly unsatisfied. With respect to the determinants of respondent's SHS in a multiple linear regression, we found the factors of perceived health status and SWLS were variables that can significantly predict the SHS score (R(2) = 0.321, adjusted R(2) = 0.267), respondent's gender and household income and SHS score were variables that can significantly predict the SWLS score (R(2) = 0.374, adjusted R(2) = 0.317). This study suggests the health and welfare service authorities should pay attention to the wellbeing profile and determinants of caregivers who working for people with disability to improve their quality of life. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.