Young children capable of reporting on their own health

[Guest guest]

Young children capable of reporting on their own health

Published: Tuesday, 20-Jul-2004 News-Medical.Net

One of the most perplexing things about children’s health is that

parents and children do not agree about it. The importance of obtaining

children’s perspectives of their own health is the subject of a major

debate among pediatricians and child health researchers.

An analysis conducted by Anne Riley, PhD, associate professor with the

Department of Health Policy and Management at the s Hopkins

Bloomberg School of Public Health, concluded that children, even those

as young as age six, can adequately understand and accurately report on

their own health. The study suggests that questionnaires and interviews

to ask children about their health directly and independently of their

parents can have many applications. This report is published in the

July/August 2004 issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics.

“There is good evidence from developmental, psychometric, cognitive

interviewing research and longitudinal studies that suggest children can

successfully complete age-appropriate health questionnaires and provide

valuable information about their own health. Parent reports differ from

those of children, but are nonetheless valuable in their own right,

especially for collecting information on medical history, behavior and

health care,” said Dr. Riley.

Dr. Riley reviewed published research on child report questionnaires and

longitudinal studies using children’s reports. The value and limitations

of the data were examined in terms of parent-child agreement on the

child’s state of health, the child’s cognitive development, the child’s

ability to respond to questionnaires and influence his or her responses,

psychometric studies of child-report questionnaires and how well the

children’s reports related to future health in longitudinal research

studies.

In addition to analyzing child report research, Dr. Riley and her

colleagues have developed publicly available assessment tools to measure

children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of their own health and

well-being, as well the parents’ perceptions of the child’s health. This

set of instruments, the Child Health and Illness Profiles, includes the

Child Edition (CHIP-CE) and Adolescent Edition (CHIP-AE). The CHIP-CE

includes an illustrated 45-item questionnaire designed for children ages

6 through 11, and parallels the parent version. Previous studies

conducted by the Hopkins researchers and published in the journal

Medical Care found that the Child Report Form of the CHIP-CE predicts

children’s future health care use as well as the Parent Report Form

does.

“Children can tell us how they feel in a way that no one else can, and

their future health is influenced by their early experiences. It is

worth the trouble to ask children about their health before their habits

and risk behaviors become established. Understanding children’s health

behaviors, problems and worries can assist health providers, parents,

teachers and health researchers to find ways to help children develop

the best health possible,” said Dr. Riley.

ww.jhsph.edu