Wellbeing perception of institutional caregivers working for people with disabilities: use of Subjective Happiness Scale and Satisfaction with Life Scale analyses.
Disability caregivers report only moderate happiness, and perceived health is the clearest warning sign.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked 88 caregivers in disability residential and day programs to fill out two quick scales. One scale measured happiness. The other measured life satisfaction.
They also asked about age, pay, health, and job role. Then they ran stats to see what best predicted happiness and satisfaction.
What they found
Staff scored in the middle on both scales — not burnt out, but not thrilled either.
Feeling healthy and scoring high on life satisfaction were the strongest signs of happiness. Gender and pay mattered less.
How this fits with other research
Lin et al. (2009) surveyed the same Taiwanese workforce one year earlier. That study used a medical health scale and found staff scored worse than the general public. The new paper shows the same workers still feel only “okay” on happiness, linking poor health to low mood.
Chu et al. (2009) and Mori et al. (2018) looked at parents, not staff. They found child sleep problems and severe disability drag mothers down. The caregiver theme is the same: health and client demands shape mood.
Ricciardi et al. (2020) asked community staff how they feel about data collection. Staff there said the task is doable and useful. Together with the current study, it shows staff will share honest feedback when we simply ask — use that openness to check wellbeing, not just paperwork skills.
Why it matters
You now know that staff who rate their health as “fair” or “poor” are the same ones with low happiness. A two-minute wellness check at supervision can flag these people early. Offer an on-site flu shot, stretch break, or EAP session before burnout hits. Healthy staff stay longer and deliver better instruction — a win for clients and your schedule.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add one question — “How would you rate your overall health?” — to your next staff check-in and follow up on any “fair” or “poor” answers.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
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 (R2=0.321, adjusted R2=0.267), respondent's gender and household income and SHS score were variables that can significantly predict the SWLS score (R2=0.374, adjusted R2=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.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.03.009