Dr.

Rojalini Sahoo
Goshala Road, Nua Sahi, Nayabazar, Cuttack, 753004
srojaa@gmail.com

Overview: Looking for a job that will help me to contribute using my skillsets and
knowledge while helping me learn and grow in the professional career.

Academic Qualifications:

PhD, Philosophy (2012)

Subject: Families, Health and Care

Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

MPhil in Sociology (2005)

Utkal University, Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar

Post graduate diploma in

Utkal University, Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar (1st class)

rural development (2004)

Masters in Sociology (2003) Specialization: Industrial Sociology (1st class)
Ravenshaw College, Cuttack
Bachelor in Arts (2001)

Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (1st class)

+2 (1998)

Ravenshaw College, Cuttack (1st class)

10th (1996)

Board of Secondary education, Cuttack, (1st class)

Overview of my doctoral dissertation

Thesis: Antecedents and Consequences of Informal Young Caregiving in Families
Supervisor: Prof. Damodar Suar

Abstract: Two studies are carried out sequentially to understand the antecedents and
consequences of caregiving to ill parents in families. The first study adopting a
qualitative paradigm examines the influence of family environment on young carers
mind, the assistance young carers provide, and the effects of young caregiving. Fifty
young carers and 50 non-young carers were interviewed. Five cards of Thematic
Apperception Test were given to construct stories to unfold the needs and pressures
operating on children and two open ended questions were asked to carers regarding the
assistance and effects of caregiving. Of the 250 stories of carers and non-carers each,
96 percent stories of carers and 64 percent stories of non-carers express about health
and illness. The content analysis of stories reveals that young carers express more
nurturance, endurance, sympathy, affiliation, anxiety, dejection, awareness, aggression,
harm avoidance, and conflict than non-young carers. Caring environment influences the
mind of the children. Content analysis of replies to two open-ended questions reveals
that young carers provide more domestic and emotional care to care-recipients. Young
carers express low concentration, anxiety, insecurity, helplessness, and responsibility
for the life. The negative effects are more than the positive ones. The second study
adopting a quantitative paradigm investigates the adverse physical, mental, and social
health, experiences, and behaviour of young carers against different types of diseases
of parents. It also develops and validates an instrument/scale to assess caregiving of
young carers, and examines the antecedents of caregiving. Data were collected
interviewing 250 young carers from a hospital at Cuttack, and from slums, garages, and
hotels in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, Odisha (India). Descriptive statistics, ANOVA,
Pearson correlation, factor analysis, and structural regression models (SRMs) were
used to analyze the data. Results revealed that carers of chronically ill parents suffer
from more adverse physical and social health than mentally ill and substance abuse
parents. But carers of mentally ill parents suffer from more adverse mental health.
Carers of mentally ill and substance abuse parents have more negative personal
experiences than the carers of chronically ill parents. Caregiving scale has high
discriminative power and constructs of the scale have high reliability. Confirmatory
factor analysis of the scores on 20 items of the scale confirms the four conceptual
dimensions of the caring including intimate, domestic, administrative, and emotional
care. The more is the caregiving activity, the more is the time spent in that activity. More
caregiving is associated with less age, female gender, small family, low socioeconomic
status, more awareness, adverse relationships with parents, and chronic illness of
parents. Young carers need to be given health-related information that can make them

efficient providing health-related services to parents and respite care can free them from
continuous caregiving.

Keywords: Caregiving, caregiving environment, chronic illness, mental illness,

substance abuse and young carers.
Research and Teaching Interests

Introduction to Sociology

Indian Society

Research Methodology

Industrial Sociology

Publications

Sahoo, R., & Suar, D. (2009). Do young carers deserve justice? Young caring in
the context of illness. Psychology and Developing Societies, 21(1), 133-150.

Sahoo, R., & Suar, D. (2010). Influence of social environment on young carers,
assistance and consequences of caregiving. Psychological Studies, 55(4), 323329.

Conference & Workshop

Young carers: Their experiences about illness in family. National

conference on Psychology, Technology, and Society on the event of XVII,
Annual Convention of National Academy of psychology (NAOP). 2007.
India.

Active participation in a short-term course on Statistical Modeling for Data

Analysis (SMDA) 2008.

Workshop by Partha S. Ghosh on Globalization and Leadership. 2008.

Certificate of participation poster presentation in Research Scholars Day. 2009.

Achievements and Awards

Institute Fellowship
First Class First in PGDRD, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar
Honors with Distinction in Sociology (Bachelor in Arts)
Date of birth: O2- 07- 1981

Nationality: Indian