The results of this descriptive study support the premise that through the research process researchers actively influenced the experiences of many of the family caregivers in the study. Caregivers seem to have been stimulated to evaluate and change their appraisals of their care-giving situation and, at times, their use of external resources and patient management strategies. We speculate that the predominant way subjects were influenced was through the opportunity to examine their experience relative to that of other caregivers as they completed the study instruments. Although it is possible that the effect was related to the specific behavior of the data collectors, we are reasonably confident that the structured interviewer training methods minimized this effect. Direct comments about interviewers were rare in responses to open-ended questions, and requests for information or help from interviewers were relatively infrequent, lending further support to the idea that interviewer effects were not a major influence on subjects. Although Rubin and Mitchell (1978) aptly described the unintended effect of study participation on their respondents, which was akin to counseling, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon in recent years. What family caregivers experienced as participants in our study, but failed to experience in their social network or formal contacts with the health care system, was an opportunity to: (a) examine their experience as a caregiver in depth, (b) anticipate what the future might hold for them, and (c) compare their personal experience to the experience of other families providing care to elderly members.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)