Intentions of College Students to Serve as Informal Caregivers for Their Older Relatives: Theory of Planned Behavior Approach

As the older adult population increases, the healthcare system is experiencing a shortage of professional health care providers and caregivers. Consequently, the role of family to serve as caregivers will expand to care for older relatives at home. Thus, a larger proportion of adult children will become caregivers, including young adults enrolled as college students. Therefore, a need exists to examine the intentions, attitudes, and subjective norms of typical college students to assume the role of informal caregivers. The present study is based on the theoretical framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The TPB assumes attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived control influence intentions which provide the best predictors of actual behavior. The cross-sectional study included an attitude scale, additional scales based on TPB, and a demographic profile. Data were collected from 750 currently enrolled university students then analyzed for descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and hierarch...