psychosocial variables and the progression of cancer by

identifying and controlling the variability in survival that

was due to biological, disease, and medical variables. The

focus was on the refinement of the procedure developed by

Weisman and Worden (1975) through improvements in the

measurement and evaluation of medical and disease variables.


 Research Questions

 The four research questions were stated as follows:

 1. What psychosocial variables are positively

correlated with survival?

 2. What psychosocial variables are negatively

correlated with survival?

 3. What proportion of the variability in survival can

be explained by a set of psychosocial variables?

 4. What proportion of the variability in survival can

be explained by a set of psychosocial variables and

co-morbidity?


 Definition of Terms

 The definitions given in this section are presented in

a sequence that reflects the relationships between the

concepts. The terms defined include those having to do with

cancer, cancer treatment, and with the variables studied in

this research.