Quality of life perceived by children adolescents and their parents

• Autor(a) principal: Batoca Silva, Ernestina
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Silva, Daniel, Duarte, João, Ferreira Aparício Costa, Maria Da Graça, Albuquerque, Carlos, Almeida, Rui
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/5304
• topic: Children; Adolescents; Quality of life; Education; Parents

The impact of children’s and adolescents’ quality of life reflects in their development whilst adults, therefore the importance to intervene as soon as possible to encourage it. This study aims to identify the quality of life perceived by children/adolescents and their parents by investigating how quality of life connects with sociodemographic variables (age, sex, and schooling age). The aim of this study is to characterize the quality of life of children and adolescents in a school context and compare their perspectives with that of their parents and to analyze the influence of sociodemographic variables on the quality of life perceived by children/adolescents. A quantitative descriptive and correlational research design was used with a non-probabilistic and convenience sample, composed by children/adolescents and their parents. We used an ad hoc questionnaire with items to identify sociodemographic characteristics and a scale to identify quality of life using faces. The study sampled 567 children/adolescents with an average age of 12.40 years (±1.591), with 50.6% being female and 592 parents answered the questionnaire (parent version), with the average age of 40.43(±2.586), with 84.8% being female. 97.9% of the children/adolescents indicated a good quality of life while 2.1% indicated a bad quality of life, with an average value of 8.45 (±1.55). The data from the parents are similar (M=8.30±1.5), but not statistically significant. Subjective perceptions of quality of life constitute important data to promote health and are relevant indicators in the area of public health. Although our data reveals a good quality of life, an intervention at school with an approach to the factors that promote mental health and development is suggested.