THE EXPERIENCE OF ASTHMA IN CHILDHOOD.
Contributors: University Of Illinois At Chicago, Health Sciences Center.
Published: 1983
Number of pages: 177
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Asthma is the most common chronic illness in childhood, yet children with asthma had not been asked to describe their own experiences. Because children's conceptions of illness often play a subtle but crucial role in the efficacy of management it is important to examine children's views before designing intervention strategies.

The pupose of this investigation was to provide a systematic description of the school age child's experience of asthma. The specific aim was to elicit and examine the definitions, explanations and feelings about the chronic and acute aspects of the asthma experience from the perspective of the school age child who has asthma. From the children's statements the meaning of the asthma experience as a psychological, cognitive, and social process, as well as a physiological syndrome, was explored.

Individual interviews with 61 children, seven through 12 years of age, were conducted in a camp setting, when the children were well. Their disease severity ranged from mild through steroid dependent.

The major finding of the study was that for the children the experience of asthma is an experience of difference. While the majority of the 30 girls and 31 boys had adequate self esteem according to the Piers Harris Children's Self Concept Scale, they perceived themselves as different from their peers.

Children's explanations of asthma included both physiological sensations and psychological descriptors. The words used by the children to describe asthma were contrasted with adult descriptors using the Asthma Symptom Checklist (ASC). The most frequently used words were classified in the airway obstruction and panic-fear categories of the ASC. The most frequently used descriptors not accommodated by the ASC were classified as "not fun"; this category included the nonspecific but negative descriptions of asthma spontaneously verbalized by the children.

The analytic approach was exploratory rather than an examination of pre-existing hypotheses, thus the implications for practice are suggested as cognitive rather than direct applications. The assessment and intervention strategies proposed incorporate the children's experience of difference. Recommendations for future research include evaluation of proposed interventions and the use of longitudinal designs to determine how children's perspectives form and change through the course of the asthma experience.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-02, Section: B, page: 0516.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO, HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER, 1983.

School code: 0806.