TITLE Parent and Child Reports of Child's Preferred Coping Style with Pain
PROBLEM Matching interventions with a child's preferred style of coping with pain may increase the interventions' effectiveness. Healthcare providers often rely on parents to report children's coping preferences.
PURPOSE To compare child and parent reports of child preferred coping style.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Miller describes two coping styles, monitoring and blunting. Some children cope with medical procedures by closely watching (monitoring), while others prefer to look away or think about something else (blunting).
METHODS AND DESIGN Subjects are 100 children (4-10 years old) undergoing an IV insertion for an outpatient medical procedure. Children's preferred coping style was measured by the Child Behavior Style Scale (CBSS) and by the question “would you rather watch or look away?” Independently, parents answer the questions “would your child rather watch or look away?” Children's actual coping behavior during the IV insertion was videotaped and coded for watching or looking away.
ANALYSIS METHOD Coping measures were compared using descriptive statistics, including kappa coefficient for agreement.
RESULTS The agreement between parent-child dyads was 69% agreement (kappa coefficient 0.27). Child response on the CBSS will be compared with child response to the question, and child and parent responses will be compared with the child's actual behavior.
CONCLUSIONS Parents may not be accurate judges of their children's preferred coping style. A simple question, “What would you rather do?, may be a valuable measure of child's preferred coping style during a painful experience.
Session #1051 - Advancing Family Health Following The NIH Road Map
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)