The Experiences of Workers Hired Under Consumer Direction in ...

• The consumer’s health and functioning indicators (whether needs help with variousactivities, self-rating of health)• The consumer’s need for decision-making support (has representative, had proxycomplete the interview)• Paid and unpaid help consumer received prior to enrollment• The consumer’s experience as supervisor• Length of time the consumer has received PCS• The consumer’s unmet needs, living situation• Whether the primary informal caregiver was employed• Hours of care in the consumer’s care plan• The consumer’s reason for enrollment• The worker’s characteristics (age, sex, race, education, marital status, whether haschildren, whether has another job)Many hypotheses could be formulated concerning what relationships might be expectedbetween these characteristics and the worker’s emotional strain, satisfaction with wages andworking conditions, and desire for more respect from the consumer or the consumer’s family.However, they are difficult to test, given the high correlation among many of the characteristicsand the modest sample size (391). Thus, we find few statistically significant relationships in ouranalyses. The most noteworthy findings (see Appendix Table A.4) are:• Workers were less satisfied with working conditions when the consumer was underage 40.• Workers of those consumers who needed limited decision-making support (defined asconsumers who had a representative but were able to respond to the surveythemselves) were less satisfied with working conditions, more likely to feel that theylacked respect from the consumer, and more likely to receive both health care andpersonal care training than the workers of consumers who did not need any decisionmakingsupport. 11 Workers who needed the most decision-making support (defined as consumers who had arepresentative and a proxy survey respondent) generally did not have significantly different49