Scheduled for Research Consortium Poster Session: Thematic Early Childhood and Elementary Education Posters, Friday, March 16, 2007, 8:45 AM - 10:15 AM, Convention Center: Exhibit Hall Poster Area I


Study of the Scale of Parent Awareness of Child Health-Related Quality of Life in Early Childhood Education

Ta-Hsiang Lin and Ching-Sung Chen, National Chia-yi University, Taiwan R.O.C, Chiayi, Taiwan

The purposed of this study was to examine the parent awareness scale of health-related quality of life of children aged between 4 and 6 in Taiwan. According to the 2004 report of spiritual health released by Mental Health Foundation, it's shown that among 16.5 million adults above the age of 20, 30% lacked the sense of belonging while 25% of them confessed their shortage of time for relaxation. Living under enormous stress, the alienation from family and interrelationships has gradually expanded, and “they can't find their point of life.” In terms of the emphasis on health-related quality of life in Taiwan, however, studies on children appears to be insufficient. As a matter of fact, the scale of child health-related quality of life may eventually influence the resource distribution of health care. A child is a future adult. The comprehension of child health-related quality of life is beneficial to enhance the living standard of future young children's health and to raise human capitals and qualities. A total of 1800 questionnaires were randomly selected from a pool of 126 public and private kindergardens. Finally, a total 1258 questionnaires were collected. The instruments was used in this study to gather information on childhood's perceptions of health life quality. With sufficient samples, structural equation modeling and competing modeling of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are adopted to verify the optimal model and assure the stability of the scale. The result reveals that second-order one-factor model is the best for constructing physiological, social, and emotional qualities of child health-related life. The correlated factors model is the best model for constructing the quality of leisure activity of child health-related life. The result of the verification indicates that all of the four above-mentioned models are equipped with reliability and convergent validity, and we can conclude that the scale is a stable measurement tool.
Keyword(s): health education K-12, physical education PK-12

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