Are there any differences in the assessment of quality of life when children score the importance of what is asked to them?

Abstract

Introduction: There are no studies that enable to explore the impact that might have the scoring of the importance that children assign to each dimension that encompass the assessment of their quality of life (QoL).

Objective: To analyze the influence of the importance assigned by children to the different spheres of their lives when having to assess their quality of life.

Material and methods: Correlational, crosssectional design. The modified KIDSCREEN-27 questionnaire was used to evaluate the importance assigned by the child to each dimension.

Results: A total of 300 schoolboys and 300 schoolgirls, with an average age of 12 years old, were evaluated. The dimension with the highest score was Peers, and the one with the lowest was Psychological well-being, both in the raw evaluation as in the weighted by importance ranking. In girls, the Physical well-being dimension scored the lowest. The dimensions Parent relations and School environment scored the highest in younger students. In girls, differences were found in the dimension that scored the lowest when they weighted the importance of the dimension; shifting the dimension with the lowest score from Psychological well-being to Physical well-being.

Conclusion: There are differences in the perception of quality of life between boys and girls, the types of schools they attend and the different ages, which do not change when being weighted by importance.