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Here's the link again so you can just click into it:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NapierUniCopingSurvey

You don't need to register or give an email address to participate.

The survey should take about 20 minutes to complete and you will be asked to respond to questions and statements relating to additional needs, coping strategies, attachment styles and support systems used when caring for the child or children.

The information given is completely confidential and anonymous and will be used for research purposes only. It isn't possible to identify individual participant replies. There is right to withdraw presented on each page of the survey until final submission as once response is submitted it is impossible to identify individual responses, completion indicates acceptance of anonymous participation. The anonymous data will only be accessible to myself and members of the research team at Edinburgh Napier University.

If the findings are published, confidentiality and anonymity is assured.
If anyone wishes to see a summary of the findings, contact details will be provided at the end of the survey. If you wish to ask me any questions before hosting this survey you can send an email to Carol Delaney, at 09001507@live.napier.ac.uk My project Supervisor is Professor Thanos Karatzias and he can be contacted on Tel. 0131 455 5345 or by Email at t.karatzias@napier.ac.uk

Many thanks

Carol

having some difficulty answering this: the depend on myself rather than other people implies that there is only one main carer (myself) and that the children's dad is somehow in the same category as other people, like a neighbour or an aunt or something

as far as I am concerned he is more a kind of extension of myself, and other people are...well, everybody else

can't imagine having a problem with dcs that wasn't equally dh's problem, or a problem developing at home that he somehow failed to notice

for instance, "I find it hard to take a decision without wondering what other people would think": I would it totally unjustified to make an important decision about dcs without involving the one person who is as close to them as I am, doesn't matter about whether it's hard or not, it would just be wrong- but that doesn't mean I am weakly worrying about what the milkman or the other mums at school think

the whole questionnaire seems to depend on the feeling that I am an island, there is me and then the rest of the world who will only be let in on my problems if I choose to confide in them

doesn't correspond to anything I know so can't answer the questions

Thank you for your feedback on the questionnaire Cory- I understand what you are saying and your insights are helpful for perspective.

The difficulty with trying to establish or compare coping styles is that we all have our unique family set up and relationships and I chose to do a quantitative survey style rather than a qualitative individual interview study and some individual detail can be lost using this approach. This can miss subtle individual differences, for example the way your partner and you work together may not be everyone elses experience. One question may be particularly relevant to one person and to another may not apply at all.

I really appreciate that you did attempt to participate and understand why you couldn't as you discovered the questions didn't correspond with your perspective. You could have just closed the page down and instead took the time to explain why you didn't participate, which helps me. thank you.

Please feel free to drop me a message if you would like to know more about where the statements originated from or the research behind them.

kindest regards

I did participate; I even answered every question; I just felt that my answers probably weren't very indicative of my actual situation. It just seemed as if all the questions depended on the assumption that there is one main carer in every family. Of course there are plenty of single parents in the country but not sure they are the majority. I think there could have been some way of wording the question that allowed for multiple main carers. But then I'm notoriously fussy about the wording of research questions.

Sorry Cory, I shouldn't have assumed that you didn't complete it.

The reason it is pitched at the individual level is that a couple may have very different coping styles. I wasn't able to re-word the questions as they are from recognised questionnaires and some of the analysis is a comparison of validity of using these questions.

I was also aware that the questions are quite similar so I didn't want to add more measures as I didn't want it being so long people would stop half way through. There is potential for this research to be expanded and many areas which I wanted to explore, but I had to set myself limits on what could be established in this particular investigation.

I hope this answers the points you have raised, I really appreciate your comments.

Hi all,

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in my study, I really appreciate it.

If you are interested in participating, the survey is going to remain open for one more week; Just click on the link, it takes about 20 minutes and you don't need to register. All caregivers of children under 18 are welcome to take part and I am very keen to hear from those who care for children with additional needs.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NapierUniCopingSurvey

Many thanks

Carol