Abstract
The purposes of this study were, basing on Hardy's role theory, to clarify the cognitive discrepancies between the role of frail people and their care givers, and to relate the discrepancies with the care burden on care givers.
The subjects were fifity pairs of frail people and their care givers in a metropolitan area. Each pair was interviewed using the standard questionnaires. Then 3 kinds of cognitive discrepancies were caluculated. Score A (S. A) is a cognitive discrepancy between the care giver's goal of care and her/his actual care realized. Score B (S. B) is a cognitive discrepancy of the expectations between a frail person and the care giver. Score C (S. C) is a cognitive discrepancy of the atual care between a frail person and the care giver.
The results were as follows:
1. Among the three scores S. A was the smallest and S. B was the largest. But the S. C was most influenced by the degree of care burden.
2. In the view of Maslow's theory on hierarchy of needs, the discrepancy of Esteem needs was the largest, followed by Safety needs, and then physiological needs. It was observed that the higher the stratum of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the larger the cognitive discrepancy.
3. Contents of discrepancies indicate the tendency of frail people to depend on their care givers.
4. As S. C was most affected by the care burden of care givers, it was suggested that the approach from the viewpoint of congnitive discrepancies between frail person and care giver will be effective to reduce the care burden.
