Parents’ perception of health-related quality of life in healthy children and adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to evaluate current health-related quality of life of healthy children and adolescents by parent proxy assessment. A total of 278 parents of healthy children (mean age 10.79±1.03 years) and adolescents (mean age 14.15±1.01 years) were invited to participate in the survey. All participants were recruited from two public schools of Ternopil city, Ukraine. Subsequently, 148 participants were excluded from the study due to incomplete data on the Child Health Questionnaire Parent Form-50 (CHQ-PF50). Therefore, the study included 130 parents of healthy children (n=55) and adolescents (n=75). Study results revealed that there were no differences in summary score of physical health and summary score of psychosocial health between children and adolescents, while comparing these summaries showed significantly worse psychosocial health than physical health in all groups of paediatric subjects (t=9.19; p=0.000000). We also identified direct correlation between summary score of physical health and summary score of psychosocial health (r=0.45; p=0.000000). Parents of healthy adolescents attributed lower scores of the CHQ-PF50 to the domains of global behaviour and emotional impact on the parent. Quality of life in healthy girls was associated with decreased global health domain when compared with healthy boys. In contrast to girls, boys were characterised by lower scores on the CHQ- PF50 for the domains of behaviour, limitations in family activities, and family cohesion. According to the parents’ reports, the summary score of physical health and summary score of psychosocial health did not differ between children and adolescents. Psychosocial health of both children and adolescents was worse than their physical health. Key words: quality of life; Health ; child; adolescents