What are methodological issues concerning research on family caregivers?

What will be an ideal response?

There are different caregiver, patient, and contextual issues that must be considered
when conducting this type of research. First, we must identify if the caregiver provides
most of the daily assistance to the client (primary caregiver) or determine if the role is
more secondary in nature. In general, family members can supply the researcher the
adults in these roles. Next, we should assess the relationship of the caregiver to the
client, for example, spouse caregivers may have stressors that are different from adult
child caregivers. In addition, the nature of the client's complaint represents an important
issue to consider, for example, caregivers assisting Alzheimer's patients may have
different outcomes than adults caring for cancer patients. In addition, when evaluating
the impact of an illness on a caregiver, it is important to have an illness control group.
That it, some researchers desire to evaluate the unique effects of a particular illness on
family caregivers; however, it is impossible to achieve this objective if one does not have
a comparison group.