Attitudes and beliefs about food allergy by adolescents_v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Attitudes, beliefs and understanding of food allergy in children and adolescents
IRAS ID
226560
Contact name
Rebecca Knibb
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 31 days
Research summary
This study aims to explore attitudes, beliefs and understanding of food allergy in children and adolescents with and without food allergy and to see whether improvement in these areas can lead to better allergy management.
Food allergies have an impact on quality of life in patients (Cummings et al., 2010) and their families (Valentine & Knibb, 2011), however there is limited research examining attitudes, beliefs and understanding of food allergy in children and adolescents. This age group has the highest proportion of fatal reactions (Pumphrey, 2000), which may be due to the higher level of risk taking behaviours in adolescents. Studies suggest that education of teenagers and their peers about food allergy may improve attitudes and enable the risks to be reduced (Sampson et al., 2006).
It is therefore important to investigate attitudes towards food allergy in adolescents both with and without food allergy. Currently, there are no relevant scales or other method to reliably measure attitudes and beliefs regarding food allergy. The aim of this research is to explore attitudes and beliefs of food allergy in children and adolescents and develop a scale to measure these. This information could be used to guide future development of interventions and improve food allergy management.
Approximately fifteen 11-16 year olds with food allergy will be recruited to take part in one-to-one interviews to discuss attitudes, beliefs and understanding of food allergy. Interviews will be transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis and a prototype scale will be developed. This will be sent out to approximately 200 participants with and without food allergy along with some psychometric scales to enable validation of the prototype. Data collected will be used to test the reliability and validity of the scale.
REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EM/0012
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion