Family quality of life among families with a child who has a severe neurodevelopmental disability: Impact of family and child socio-demographic factors
Section snippets
What this paper adds
This paper expands our understanding regarding the use of the FQOL measure in a number of ways. Locally it adds specific socio-demographic information to that previously known about the Israeli population in those families having a child with a severe neurodevelopmental disability. Of interest to the larger audience is the examination of the relationship between FQOL scores and child and family characteristics. We found both of these to impact on the FQOL scores reported. Finally this is one of
Inclusion/exclusion criteria
This study included a convenience sample of parents/legal guardians of children with a severe neurodevelopmental disability who received services from the Meuhedet Health Maintenance Organization, one of four serving the population in Israel.
Subjects were included if they
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Resided in northern Israel (defined for the purposes of this study as place of residence located north of the city of Hadera, Israel). Northern Israel, not including the Hadera area, measures 5104 square kilometers out of a
Results
The domain and dimension scores are organized as a matrix. The mean Total Domain Means score is the average of all dimensions, which compose the specific domain. Similarly, the mean Total Dimension Means score is the average of all domains, which compose the specific dimension. The means of each of the nine domains across the six dimensions for the sample are shown in Table 3. Domain scores (mean ± sd) ranged between 3.99 ± 1.06 for family relations and 3.12 ± 1.19 for financial well-being.
Discussion
Parents raising a child with a severe neurodevelopmental disability in Northern Israel reported FQOL ratings that were about average (on a Likert scale of 1 to 5) in almost all domains and dimensions examined. However, of greater importance was our identification of relationships between family and child characteristics and the overall FQOL and different domains and dimensions scores composing family quality of life.
Funding source
Meuhedet supported this project internally
Acknowledgements
We are extremely grateful to the families who participated in this study and to Shira Barak, Naama Eldar and Sawsan Asadi for data collection.
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