MS patients’ spouse

Objective: The purpose of this study is to create a conceptual empirical model and develop a causal model that is able to explain overall performance of MS patients’ families and provide a scientific and empirical basis to Iranian culture to identify the psychological indexes of hardiness, hope, and resiliency, as well as the mediator role of moral foundations and spiritual experiences involved in family overall performances among patients’ spouses. For this purpose, using non-random sampling method, 220 subjects were selected out of all patients with MS and their spouses in two cities of Tehran and Karaj in 2014-2015. They completed the questionnaires of Family Assessment Device, Hardiness Scale (Kobasa, 1990), Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Snyder Hope Scale, Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale, and Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Hythe & Graham, 2007) personally and non- personally. In order to analyze the data, common methods of descriptive statistics, structural equations, path analysis, and multiple regression were used and the data were analyzed using the software packages of SPSS and LISREL. The results showed that hope was determined as the variable that predicts family overall performance with a good effect coefficient. The other important finding about the model was that the path from the mediator variable of spiritual experiences towards family overall performance was not direct, that is spiritual experience was effective on moral foundations and moral foundations in turn was the most effective path to family overall performance.