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Health‐related quality of life and children's happiness with their childcare
Author(s) -
Lloyd K.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.2011.01254.x
Subject(s) - happiness , perspective (graphical) , quality of life (healthcare) , psychology , medicine , developmental psychology , gerontology , nursing , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science
Background Almost without exception, research into the range and quality of childcare provision, and its correlates with children's development, comes from the perspective of adults. Parents, childcare workers, teachers and the general public have all been asked for their views on childcare. In contrast, there is a dearth of information on attitudes to childcare provision and its correlates from the perspective of the children themselves. Methods A total of 3657 Primary 7 children, who are 10 or 11 years of age, completed the KIDSCREEN‐27 health‐related quality of life (HRQoL) measure along with questions on their childcare provision as part of an online survey carried out in schools. Results Most children receiving childcare from people other than their parents were completely happy with their care. Childcare was related to poorer HRQoL for girls on four of the five KIDSCREEN domains, although the effect sizes were small. For both boys and girls, there were statistically significant, although modest, correlations between happiness with childcare and scores on all five domains of the KIDSCREEN‐27. Conclusions Overall, the findings suggest that most children are happy with their care and that any differences between the HRQoL of those who are cared for by their parents and those who are not are small to moderate.