Family Coping Model Based on Psychosocial Responses to the Ability to Care for School Age Autistic Children

Abstract

Introduction: The increasing prevalence of autism was a burden, especially for families and made them feeling stressed and ashamed of the negative stigma from the social environment, so that psychosocial response of the family critical and maladaptive coping was created. To build a family management model based on psychosocial responses to the family’s ability of caring for school‑age autistic children. Materials and Methods: The research design used a quasi‑experiment. The population and samples were parents of autistic children, who had attended Surabaya Autism Therapy Center. The determination of the sample sizes used the rule of thumb formula in Structural Equality Modeling (SEM) several 108. The data collection technique used Multi‑Stage Sampling. The measuring instrument used a questionnaire. Modeling analysis used Partial Least Squares Structural Equality Modeling (PLS‑SEM). Results: The results of the prediction test of the model showed R‑square = 0.497 (strong). The relevance test of the model prediction showed Q‑Square = 0.482 (good). The model accuracy test showed Goodness of Fit (GoF) = 0.376 (large). The test of the influences between variables showed that the social support had a significant impact on psycho‑social responses (p = 0.001), the psycho‑social response had an important influence on family coping (p = 0.001) and the family coping had a significant impact to the ability to care for autistic children (p = 0.001). Conclusions: The family coping model based on psychosocial responses was an appropriate model that had a significant influence on the ability to care for autistic children.