Coping in children and adolescents with food allergy.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Coping in children and adolescents with food allergy.
IRAS ID
172686
Contact name
Rebecca Knibb
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Aston University
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The study aims to explore attitudes towards risk taking in children and adolescents with food allergy and how they cope with having a food allergy, and will aim develop validated age-related coping scales. There is limited research that specifically examines how children and adolescents view the risk of food allergy and how they cope with it (Sampson et al., 2006). This is an area of interest as research suggests that these age groups represent the highest proportion of fatal reactions (Pumphrey and Gowland, 2007). It is important to establish an individual’s level of risk taking behaviour and their coping strategies for food allergy management across different areas of risk. Therefore, scales need to be developed to reliably measure these. Disease specific coping scales have been developed for asthma (Aalto et al., 2002), but as yet, there are no food allergy specific coping scales or any way of reliably measuring the risks an individual with food allergy takes. The study aims to address these issues which could be used to guide future development of interventions to reduce risky behaviours and improve coping strategies in this population.
Children and adolescents aged 8-16 years with food allergy will be recruited and will take part in one-to-one interviews to discuss how they manage their food allergy and explore any risks they make take with their food allergy management. They will be asked how they cope with their food allergy, practically day to day, physically and emotionally. Interviews will be transcribed and will be analysed using inductive thematic analysis and content analysis to extract relevant items for a prototype scale. The scale (along with validation scales) will then be administered to approximately 300 participants recruited from allergy clinics in the West Midlands.
REC name
South West - Frenchay Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SW/0316
Date of REC Opinion
27 Oct 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion