Agreement between parental and student reports on respiratory symptoms and school environment in young Romanian children – evidence from the SINPHONIE project
-
Yi Lu
,
Tia Marks
,
Eva Csobod
Abstract
Background
Environmental research involving children often relies on the self-report or parental report of symptoms and environmental issues. While previous studies explored the agreements between child and parental reports, few of them were conducted in younger children and in developing countries. In this study, we addressed the research gaps by assessing the agreement between child and parental report on respiratory symptoms and school environment in Romanian primary schools.
Methods
Two hundred and eighty students from five schools and their parents participated in this study. Information on child’s respiratory symptoms and perceptions of school environment was collected via both student and parent questionnaires. Agreement between the two questionnaires was assessed by absolute agreement rates and kappa statistics. Prevalence index (PI), bias index (BI) and maximum attainable kappas were calculated to identify potential sources of disagreements.
Results
The agreement between student and parent questionnaires was low. Compared to the student’s report, parents often reported more symptoms than their children, particularly flu-like symptoms, and school environment problems. Parent and child tend to agree when there was no symptom reported, but disagreements often occurred when symptoms were reported. After adjusting for the PI, the agreements for asthma and allergic symptoms improved substantially. Disagreement on reporting of flu-like symptoms was strongly affected by pre-existing causes, such as different understandings of the questions between students and parents.
Conclusion
Parental report may have a higher sensitivity in capturing a child’s respiratory symptoms and school environment problems compared to self-report among young children in developing countries.
Funding source: European Parliament
Award Identifier / Grant number: SANCO/2009/c4/04
Funding statement: This work was supported by SINPHONIE (Schools Indoor Pollution and Health: Observatory Network in Europe) a project carried out under contract (contract SANCO/2009/c4/04, funder Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000784) for the European Commission, and funded by the European Parliament. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funders. The funders played no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation, in the writing of the report or in the decision to submit this article for publication.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the participants whose generous time and effort made this study possible.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Informed consent: All participants provided written informed consent prior to study participation.
Ethical approval: Our project involved school children and their parents and all research activities were conducted under the local Public Health Authority coordination.
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Supplementary Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/reveh-2018-0087).
©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- International scientists seek solutions for environmental problems
- Reviews
- A link between environmental pollution and civilization disorders: a mini review
- Applying community resilience theory to engagement with residents facing cumulative environmental exposure risks: lessons from Louisiana’s industrial corridor
- Mini Reviews
- Building science approaches for vapor intrusion studies
- Application of metabolomics to characterize environmental pollutant toxicity and disease risks
- Advancing science in rapidly changing environments: opportunities for the Central and Eastern European Conference on Health and the Environment to connect to other networks
- Original Articles
- Monitoring and assessment of formaldehyde levels in residential areas from two cities in Romania
- Agreement between parental and student reports on respiratory symptoms and school environment in young Romanian children – evidence from the SINPHONIE project
- Impact of plant growth regulators and soil properties on Miscanthus x giganteus biomass parameters and uptake of metals in military soils
- Community resilience and critical transformations: the case of St. Gabriel, Louisiana
- Short Communication
- The ecological risk assessment of soil contamination with Ti and Fe at military sites in Ukraine: avoidance and reproduction tests with Folsomia candida
