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Sense of coherence and WHOQoL among parents of children with ASD in Malaysia

  • Poh-Chua Siah EMAIL logo and Siew-Huei Tan
Published/Copyright: October 24, 2014

Abstract

Background: Studies have shown that most parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) face more stress and have a poorer quality of life (QoL) than other parents. Nonetheless, there are still some parents of children with ASD who are able to maintain or even improve their QoL. This study is aimed to explore the relationship between SoC and WHOQoL among parents of children with ASD.

Method: A total of 96 parents of children with ASD were invited to participate using a purposive sampling method.

Results: The results suggested that participants in the high SoC group had better QoL in the four domains than those in the low SoC group. More importantly, not all types of SoC were relevant to QoL. Comprehensibility was relevant to all the four QoL domains and manageability was relevant to physical and psychological health, while meaningfulness was not relevant to any of the QoL domains.

Conclusions: NGOs may improve the QoL of these parents by providing trainings to improve their SOC, especially in comprehensibility and manageability.


Corresponding author: Dr. Poh-Chua Siah, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Department of Psychology and Counseling, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Jalan Universiti, Bandar Barat, 31900 Kampar, Perak, Malaysia, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

This study is sponsored by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) of the Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education (FRGS/1/2012/SS02/UTAR/02/01). The authors would like to thank Mr. Koh Guan Hoe, Ms. Annie Liew Wei Fun, Ms. Chan Ruenn Peng, and Ms. Khor Soo Nee for allowing to access the group of parents of children with ASD and recruiting them as our participants.

Conflict of interest statement

Authors’ conflict of interest disclosure: The authors stated that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article. Research funding played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.

Research funding: None declared.

Employment or leadership: None declared.

Honorarium: None declared.

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Received: 2013-9-30
Accepted: 2013-11-24
Published Online: 2014-10-24
Published in Print: 2015-2-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

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