DEVELOPING A GENERIC DESCRIPTIVE SYSTEM FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH- A QUALITATIVE STUDY
Author(s)
Kang E, Han GR, Kim HJ
Soonchunhyang University, Asan City, South Korea
OBJECTIVES: Although there are several general valuation tools for health states have been developed for adults, there are few of those for children. In addition, it is arguable that the health dimensions included in the health descriptive system developed in the Western countries are valid in the Eastern countries like Korea. The purpose of this study was to elicit health dimensions of children as the first step of developing a general valuation tool for children's health states. METHODS: The sample was recruited from one elementary school in Cheonan city, Korea. The total number of participants was 40: 22 boys and 18 girls, 15 from grade 1 through 3 and 25 from grade 4 through 6. Interviews were done in a group of 3 to 4 children of the same grade. Two trained interviewers asked various open-ended questions including "What comes up in your mind when you hear the word 'health' and why do you think so?" All the interviews were recorded and transcribed. NVivo 10 was used for the qualitative analysis. Currently, more samples are recruited from outpatients to a university hospital, which will be added to the analysis by the time of the conference. RESULTS: Over 100 words and phrases that were directly or indirectly related to concept of health were extracted. After carefully and repeatedly reviewing these words and phrases, we categorized them into similar meaning units. As a result, we could obtain 13 themes including food/nutrition, physical activity, usual activities, loneliness, depression/anxiety, pain, good mood/joyfulness, robustness/good stature, playing with friends, family, fear, longevity, disease/treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The study found new dimensions that had not been included in the previous health descriptive systems for children such as food/nutrition, robustness/good stature, and family. This implies that children from different cultural backgrounds might need different general health descriptive systems.
Conference/Value in Health Info
2014-05, ISPOR 2014, Palais des Congres de Montreal
Value in Health, Vol. 17, No. 3 (May 2014)
Code
PIH53
Topic
Patient-Centered Research
Topic Subcategory
Health State Utilities
Disease
Multiple Diseases, Reproductive and Sexual Health