中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: This study investigates the moderating effect of locus of control on the relationship between pain coping strategies (problem-oriented coping/emotion-oriented coping) and quality of life in cancer patients. Methods: Seventy cancer pain patients participated in this study. All participants completed the pain severity subscale of the Taiwanese version of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI-T), a locus of control scale, a pain coping strategies checklist, and the Brief Version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire-Taiwanese version (WHOQOL-BREF-T). The data were collected from July 2006 to December 2006. Results: The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that locus of control moderated the relationship between problem-oriented coping and quality of life. More problem-oriented coping strategies predicted better quality of life for the cancer pain patients with an internal locus of control, whereas no such association was found for the cancer pain patients with an external locus of control. Moreover, we also found that a person’s locus of control moderated the relationship between emotion-oriented coping and quality of life. More emotion-oriented coping strategies predicted worse quality of life for the cancer pain patients with an internal locus of control, whereas more emotionoriented coping strategies predicted better quality of life for the cancer pain patients with an external locus of control. Conclusions: In the process of coping with cancer pain, whether the problem-oriented and emotion-oriented coping strategies facilitate a patient's quality of life depends on that person's locus of control.