Communications of the ACM
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A graph representation to investigate correlations and dynamic of changes of different psychosocial factor of chronically ill patients is proposed. The rationale of the study was the theory of meaningfulness of suffering by V. E. Frankl. Participants were 181 patients with either arterial hypertension or neoplasms with bad prognosis, examined thrice: 0-10 days from the time of diagnosis (stage I), about 5 weeks from the diagnosis (stage II) and at a follow-up about 5 months since stage II (stage III). 75 factors were available for consideration: 17 in stage I, 28 in stage II, 27 in stage III and 4 sets of data that describe populations: age, gender, education, number of stages executed. For both diseases graph are built under assumption that factors are vertices and significant correlations are edges. The graphs are built for each gender and for each disease separately. Matching degree of graphs between diseases and gender is shown. Usefulness of this approach to analysis of difference between diseases and dynamic of factors is discussed.