Mapping Life’s Highs and Lows: Investigating Experiences of Contingency in the Life Lines of Cancer Patients.
Method Stream: Qualitative Research
EC's: Only 14 EC (standard, no new/own data collection. Applicable in case of a clinical internship)
Description:
Receiving a cancer diagnosis can be a life-changing event. It can raise existential questions and uncertainties and may even cause a break in one’s life story. Such an event is called an experience of contingency: the event is neither necessary nor impossible. Put simply, things could have been different (Hartog et al., 2020).
Currently, various interventions and tools exist or are being developed to support cancer patients in dealing with an experience of contingency. One such tool is the Reconstruction of Life Events (RE-LIFE) questionnaire. This questionnaire was developed to measure the experience of contingency of a life event and the level of narrative integration of the event into the life story. The questionnaire begins with drawing a life line and identifying the most impactful life event. After this, patients answer questions (on a Likert scale) based on this life event. It includes different scales, such as experience of contingency, scope, and life goals.
However, this questionnaire still needs to be validated. For this validation research, the questionnaire was sent to 2,260 cancer patients at Amsterdam UMC, and as of writing, 400 patients have responded. Unfortunately, the life lines are not used in the validation analysis, even though they are rich in data. They provide valuable insight into how patients evaluate their lives and how they experienced their cancer diagnosis. We assume that cancer is often the most impactful life event, but is this the case? How does the most impactful life event relate to other high and low points on the life line? For this thesis, we want to offer students the opportunity to research these life lines.