Paper: Factors that Influence Health-Related Quality of Life in Schoolchildren with Asthma in Taiwan (Sigma Theta Tau International's 21st International Nursing Research Congress)

Wednesday, 14 July 2010: 11:40 AM

Chun-Hsia Huang, RN
School of Nursing, National Yang-Ming University; Municipal Zhong-Xiao Elementary School, Taipei, Taiwan
Shu Yu, PhD, RN
School of Nursing, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan
Chen-Ju Chen, RN, MS
School of Nursing, National Yang Ming University; Department of Nursing, Yuanpei University, Taipei, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand factors that influence health-related quality of life in schoolchildren with asthma in Taiwan

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to identify the important predicting factors in schoolchildren with asthma in Taiwan.

Background: Asthma affects 20% of children in the Taipei, Taiwan. That can restrict a child’s life, and this has an impact on a child’s quality of life. Limited research has addressed asthma QOL for children.

Objectives: This paper is a report of a study to determine the personal demographic, family factors, associated with asthma quality of life (QOL), as self-reported by school children from the Taiwan.

Design: This cross-sectional exploratory study was adopted. And a purposive sampling method was used to recruit 111 participants (75 males and 36 females), aged from 7 to 17(mean age of 10.23years, SD = 2.36); from a pediatrics clinic of a medical center in Taipei. Data were collected by using a self-report questionnaire regarding the Paediatric asthma quality of life questionnaire(PAQLQ) in children with asthma.

Results: The results indicated that 1) the overall QOL schoolchildren with asthma was above average(mean = 5.79, SD = 0.96) ; the emotion domain gained the highest score, than in activity limited and symptoms domain; 2) significant associations were found of grade in school, having asthma attack in the past one year(p<.001.), using the inhaler(p<.01.), Severity(P<.05.), main caregivers(p<.01.), and numbers of siblings(P<.05.) would influence the children QOL with asthma; 3) results of the stepwise regression analysis revealed that having asthma attack in the past one year, caregiver by parents, and having 2 siblings were the important predicting factors, which could account for 20.70% of the total variance and 18.40% of the explained variance after adjustment.Conclusions: The results of this study could provide insights for understanding children and adolescents' self-evaluation of the health-related quality of life and may serve as a reference for health policy making, medical care and further related research.

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