1. Relationship of Self-Reported and Caregiver-Reported Quality of Life Scores in
Unhealthy Weight Children
Kelsey A. Clary, Samantha Kurkowski, Hiba Syed, Brianna Corwin, Dr. Kiran Choudhry M.D., and Dr. Erin Dannecker Ph.D.
Introduction
Healthcare costs related to childhood obesity and its complications are on the rise.
Several prevention programs have been set up across the country, but childhood
obesity rates fail to decrease. O’Neil et al. (2010) suggested that examining the
“characteristics of the parent-child dyads” may be an important factor in managing
childhood obesity. A study performed in Taiwan found that children who are
overweight or obese reported a lower overall quality of life than their normal
weight peers and also that their parents’ seemed to be unaware of this decrease
(Lin, Su, Wang, and Ma, 2013). Another study in Southern Taiwan looked at the
differences in quality of life of obese children across gender and grade and found
that parents, again, seemed to be unaware of their child’s lower quality of life (Su,
Wang, and Lin, 2013). We proposed the question of whether caregiver’s
perceptions and children’s self-reported quality of life scores are correlated in our
population of unhealthy weight children, specifically, in the subscales of physical,
emotional, social, and school functioning. We expected to find no significant
correlations, which we believe may be a problem if caregivers are unable to address
their children’s low quality of life due to lack of awareness.
Methods
 Dyads were recruited at regular appointments at the University of Missouri,
Women’s and Children’s Specialty Clinics, and 49 dyads willing to participate each
returned to the clinic for a separate interview for the study.
 The caregiver was moved to a room separate from the child and the two were
interviewed separately about many aspects of the child’s life including an
assessment of quality of life using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL).
 Spearman’s correlations were analyzed between caregiver’s PedsQL responses
and the children’s PedsQL responses for the total PedsQL score and the subscales
of physical functioning, emotional functioning, social functioning, and school
functioning.
Subjects
Data
Conclusion
Caregivers of overweight or obese children seeking care for their children
at the University of Missouri, Women’s and Children’s Specialty Clinics
appeared to be somewhat aware of the overall quality of life of their
children based on the correlation found in the total PedsQL score.
Caregivers appeared to be most aware of the quality of life of their
children in the physical functioning subscale and slightly less so in the
subscale of school functioning. From the spread of our data in all
subscales and in the total PedsQL score, there appears to be variation in
awareness of children’s quality of life between caregiver/child dyads that
was not analyzed in this study. We suspect that the significant
correlations found in our sample in contrast to previous studies might be
due to unidentified factors that affect a caregiver’s ability to assess the
quality of life of their child. Further research is required to establish how
family makeup, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, gender, or other
factors may affect a caregiver’s ability to perceive his or her child’s quality
of life.
Child vs. Proxy PQL Physical Functioning
Child vs. Proxy PQL School Functioning
Table 1: Description of demographics of study sample
Figure 2: Scatterplot of the relationship between child and
proxy-reports on the PedsQL in the subscale of school
functioning (r=0.367, p=0.010).
Figure 3: Scatterplot of the relationship between
child and proxy-reports on the PedsQL total score
(r=0.352, p=0.018).
Table 2: Summary of Spearman’s Correlation Coefficients
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the University of Missouri
Research Council and the Leda J. Sears Foundation to Drs. Kiran
Choudhry and Erin A Dannecker.
Figure 1: Scatterplot of the relationships between child and
proxy-reports on the PedsQL in the subscale of physical
functioning (r=0.415 p=0.003).
Child vs. Proxy PQL Total