Self‐Perceived Quality of Life for Adolescents with Physical Disabilities — A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of physical disabilities (PD) on the quality of life (QoL) of adolescents aged from 10 to 18 years. Sixty-three adolescents with PD (aged 14.9 +/- 2.4 years) from primary (5th grade or above) to high schools in Kaohsiung City volunteered to participate in this research; 282 children without disability (aged 13.8 +/- 2.3 years) attending schools in the same geographical region were recruited as controls. The Student Version of the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale was used in this study. This is a multidimensional self-report, global measure of subjective and objective QoL. Multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the two groups were significantly different in objective QoL (F = 11.53, p < 0.001). Material wellbeing was substantially lower in the PD group when compared to the control group. In contrast, domains such as productivity, safety, and emotion were higher in the PD group. Among the subjective scales, the PD group showed higher productivity and better emotion when compared to the control group. No significant correlation was observed between objective and subjective overall QoL scores (r = 0.20, p = 0.12) in the PD group. These findings showed that subjects with PD in regular schools demonstrated different patterns in objective and subjective QoL when compared to those without PD. Both subjective and objective domains are important when measuring QoL of adolescents with PD.

Health-Related Quality of Life in Children Attending Special and Typical Education Greek Schools

“…This is in agreement with previous studies comparing children with disabilities and typical children (Edwards et al, 2003;Gkoltsiou et al, 2008;Ikeda et al, 2014;Watson & Keith, 2002;Zwicker et al, 2013). In contrast, our results, do not confirm previous studies, which concluded that, despite any differences in the physical functioning domain, children with disabilities display similar or even better HRQOL scores compared with typical children (Albrecht & Devlieger, 1999;Jelsma & Ramma, 2010;Ju et al, 2006;King et al, 1993;Wendelborg & Tøssebro, 2011). Of the above, two studies have been performed in school settings.…”

“…Many factors may account for these differences between studies. First, some studies examined children with various physical disabilities (Ju et al, 2006;Watson & Keith, 2002), intellectual disabilities (Ikeda et al, 2014;Zwicker et al, 2013) or both (present study; Edwards et al, 2003) while one study examined students with chronic illnesses without providing specific information regarding the type or the severity of the illness (Gkoltsiou et al, 2008). Second, the use of the parent-proxy version of the questionnaire might have resulted in lower HRQOL scores than those reported by the children themselves (Achenbach, McConaughy, & Howell, 1987;Jelsma & Ramma, 2010).…”

“…Out of the 45 students of IC, there were three students with autism, 31 students with learning difficulties (mainly dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and 11 had both physical and intellectual disabilities. The term 'physical' refers to musculoskeletal, orthopaedic or neurological origin disabilities that largely affect locomotor functions and limit one or more aspects of daily living activities (Ju et al, 2006).…”

“…King, Shultz, Steel, Gilpin, and Cathers (1993) reported that children with various types of physical disability (cerebral palsy, cleft lip or palate and spina bifida) differed compared with children without disabilities in some aspects of self-concept. Ju et al (2006) found that adolescent students (aged 14.9 years) with various physical disabilities showed a lower self-rated quality of life score and material well-being but a higher score in productivity, safety and emotion domains than their typical school peers. using both self-and parent assessment forms, Jelsma and Ramma (2010) showed that students at special schools provided similar HRQOL scores in most domains to their typically developing peers.…”

Paralytic poliomyelitis: Quality of life of adolescent survivors

“…Indeed, in a previous study, no correlation was found between objective and subjective QoL in individuals with physical disabilities, while weak to moderate correlations were found between the variables among the controls [26]. However, contrary to the findings of Ju et al [36] and Lui et al [37], polio survivors in this study did not score significantly higher than the controls in subjective QoL. Chow et al [26] had similarly reported no significant difference between the subjective QoL scores of adolescents with physical disabilities and controls.…”