Testing Models of Change in Life Goals After a Cancer Diagnosis

Abstract

This study analyzes goals of 159 cancer patients before the start of therapy and goals of 160 healthy controls. Follow-up data were collected at about 9 and 18 months after the first assessment. Patients reported fewer achievement-related goals and leisure goals than controls and had a shorter time perspective for their goals; these differences persisted over the study interval. Whereas the number of health-related goals was similar in both groups at the Time 1, patients showed an increase in this goal category thereafter. In addition, patients reported more health-related barriers to goal pursuit than their healthy peers at Time 1, but this difference declined over time. We conclude that cancer influences loss-based goal selection in the first days after being diagnosed and that the changed goal perspective is widely maintained for one and a half years.

This study was supported by Research Grant 70-2445-Hö3 from the German Cancer Aid (Deutsche Krebshilfe).

Notes

Note. Significant chi-square scores indicate significant variability in initial status and growth rate, respectively.

∗p < .05

∗∗∗p < .001.

Note. β = regression coefficient. Cancer status: 1 = cancer, 0 = healthy; education: 1 = highest school track, 0 = other; gender: 1 = male, 0 = female; partner status: 1 = married/intimate relationship, 0 = other.

∗p < .05

∗∗p < .01

∗∗∗p < .001.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Pinquart

Martin Pinquart is a professor of developmental psychology at Philipps University, Marburg, Germany. His research interests include life-span development and regulation of developmental processes and the effects of critical life events on psychological development in particular.

Cornelia Fröhlich

Cornelia Fröhlich is a research associate in the Department of Developmental Psychology and the Center for Applied Developmental Science at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany. She has recently finished her dissertation on change in life goals of cancer patients.

Rainer K. Silbereisen

Rainer K. Silbereisen is the head of the Department of Developmental Psychology and the director of the Center for Applied Developmental Science at Friedrich Schiller University. In addition, he is an adjunct professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests focus on effects of social change on human development, acculturation, biobehavioral aspects of adolescent development, and life-span development in general.