The purpose of the present study was to predict children's posthospitalization behavioural difficulties consequent to day surgery. Temperament characteristics and characteristics of the mother-child relationship were used to predict children's behavioural difficulties at three days, three weeks and two months posthospitalization. The mothers of the 57 subjects rated their child's pre- and posthospitalization behaviour on the Vernon Hospital Questionnaire. The Behavioural Style Questionnaire was used as the temperament measure and the Parenting Stress Index was used to assess the degree of stress within the mother-child relationship. Repeated measures analysis of variance on the Vernon Hospitalization Questionnaire indicated that there were significant differences among children's scores at the pre- and posthospitalization periods. Subsequent analyses indicated significant differences on four of the six subscales of this questionnaire. HMRs were conducted on children's behavioural difficulties with three temperament variables and the total stress variable entered as predictors. The results of these HMRs indicated that mood and total stress predicted behavioural difficulties at pre- and two month posthospitalization, whereas adapt and total stress predicted behavioural difficulties at three days and three weeks posthospitalization. Assessment of the predictive accuracy of the sample regression equations by the jackknife procedure indicated that the regression equations provide accurate predictors. Recommendations are proposed concerning how to identify children at risk for posthospitalization behavioural difficulties.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/7547 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Larmour, Sandra. |
| Contributors | Crombie, G., |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 263 p. |
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