Health literacy amongst children living with a long-term condition: ‘What I know and who I tell’

The aim of this study is to investigate children’s (6-10 yrs) understanding of their long-term condition and aspects of its daily management to explore the ways in which this understanding informs their decisions about what and with whom they share information about their condition.

This study will use a participatory arts-based qualitative child-centred approach informed by the work of Carter and Ford (2012) to generate qualitative data with children aged 6-10 years.

The children will create/use their own artistic output both to facilitate the child’s engagement, communication, control and interpretation of their own experiences as well as provide a subsequent data set that can be sensitively interpreted alongside text-based data (Carter & Ford, 2013). Occurring concurrently with the creation of arts-based representations will be an in-depth qualitative exploration of young children’s understanding of their own long-term condition and its associated daily management, as well as considerations about what, with whom and how they share information about their condition with others and any iterative changes in their own perceptions of their condition that might result.

The synthesis of data from a series of three questions will ensure that the aim of the study is achieved. What do they know and understand about their condition? Who do they tell/not tell and why? What do you think it would be important to tell someone who knows nothing about your condition?

Article

• Peck B, Bray L, Dickinson A, Blamires J, Terry D, Carter B. (2023). Health literacy amongst children living with a long-term condition: ‘What I know and who I tell’. Health Education Journal DOI: 10.1177/00178969231168210 (In press). https://research.edgehill.ac.uk/en/publications/health-literacy-amongst-children-living-with-a-long-term-condition