Studies of people's experiences with personal control have been limited to anecdotal case histories or experimental stress research on healthy adults. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to determine, through interviews, the ways in which 57 adults with late-stage cancer described their noncontrollable situation and the things over which they maintained control despite their disease. Content analysis yielded four conceptual categories that emerged from the data. These categories characterized the patients' experience with cancer: monitoring progress, waiting it out, refocusing control, and turning it over. The authors delineate the meaning of these categories and discuss the implications of their findings for clinical practice.
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Lewis et al. (1986) studied this question.