ADJUSTMENT OF CHILDREN WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS: CHILD, PARENT, AND TEACHER PERSPECTIVES ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CHILD.
Contributors: Harvard University.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 106
Subjects: Psychology, Clinical.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The larger study of which this research is a part identifies some of the characteristics that are related to the development of children's resilience in the face of a chronic illness. Its broad aims are to contribute to a conceptual framework on vulnerability, coping, and adaptation in children with chronic illness that can be used by health care providers and educators as the basis for their clinical interventions, educational programs, and policy decisions.

The unique contribution of this research is its focus on the characteristics that children bring to bear on their psychosocial adjustment, and how these characteristics interact with the children's health status to determine psychosocial risk and resilience. This study examines the importance of the child attributes of age, verbal intelligence, cognitive understanding, temperament, health locus of control, and social networks in the prediction of psychosocial adjustment among healthy children, children with a seizure disorder, and children with orthopedic conditions. In addition, the study investigates how the psychosocial adjustment of chronically-ill and healthy children differs according to the perception of three observers, the child, the parent, and the teacher.

A combined measure of temperament as well as the special contribution of the parent's view of the child's temperament was important in the prediction of child adjustment from the perspective of all of the observers. From the adult perspective (parent and teacher), gender and the interaction between temperament and verbal intelligence were important in predicting the child's adjustment. Verbal intelligence was particularly prominent from the teacher's point of view, reflecting differences in setting and the observer's orientation to the child.

There was a trend indicating that healthy children were better adjusted than their peers with chronic illnesses; this trend was emphasized by parents, but was seemingly unimportant to teachers. From the child's point of view only, age and health locus of control beliefs contributed to the prediction of child adjustment.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-11, Section: B, page: 5564.

Thesis (ED.D.)--HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 1990.

School code: 0084.