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Children's Concepts of Illness
Children's Concepts of Illness
*Requests for reprints should be addressed to Joanne Williams, Lecturer in Psychology, Faculty of Education, St John’s Land,
Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, UK (e-mail: Jo.Williams@ed.ac.uk).
130 Joanne M. Williams and Lynne M. Binnie
There has been a ‘recent outbreak’of research concerning children’s concepts of illness
(Solomon & Cassimatis, 1999, p. 113). Understanding the content of children’s knowl-
edge will help clinicians provide age appropriate explanations of illness (Eiser, 1985)
and aid the development of age-appropriate preventative health education strategies
(Burbach & Peterson, 1986).
Method
Participants
A group of 30 3- and 4-year-olds (15 boys, 15 girls: M = 4, 1; range = 3, 7 to 4,7) and a
group of 30 6-and 7-year-olds (24 boys, 6 girls: M = 7, 2; range = 6, 8 to 7,6) from a state-
run primary school were included in the study (N = 60).
Materials
Stimulus questions for pre- and post-tests
A series of questions was followed by xed choice illness explanations. Fixed-choice
response methods have been used extensively in research on children’s cognitive
development (e.g. Hatano & Inagaki, 1999). This method allows children to display
their understanding without requiring them to generate complex explanations. Young
children’s knowledge of illness is often underestimated when measured using struc-
tured interviews (Kalish, 1996a).
Questions about each of the six specic ailments explored three dimensions: causes
of illness; time from cause to effect (i.e. illness onset); and recovery factors (format of
questions based on Springer & Keil, 1991). The cold and chickenpox were selected as
examples of contagious illness; cancer and asthma were chosen as examples of non-
contagious illness; and a broken arm and a scraped knee were included as common
injuries. Previous research and piloting indicates that children have some familiarity
with, and exhibit knowledge of these exemplars (e.g. Kister & Patterson, 1980). Each
question was illustrated by a cartoon picture of a child exhibiting common symptoms of
the illness or injury at issue. The cartoons were designed to maintain children’s interest
in the task and to remind them of typical characteristics of the particular childhood
ailments.
Children’s concepts of illness 133
The questions were worded as follows:
(1) Causes: ‘Here is a picture of (name). (Name) has (ailment). I am going to tell you
four reasons why (name) might have (ailment) and I want you to tell me what one
you think is the best’.
(2) Time: ‘Now how long do you think it took from (cause child chooses) to getting
(ailment)? Do you think . . .?’
(3) Recovery: ‘(Name) gets better. How do you think they got better. Do you think . . .?’
For each question three (time process variable) or four (cause and recovery process
variables) responses were presented, reecting different levels of reasoning (see
Appendix 1). Responses were coded on a scale from 3 or 4 (most accurate) to 1
(least accurate). As far as possible, given the content of each explanation, effort was
made to provide responses of a similar length and complexity, in order to reduce bias.
Responses were developed following extensive piloting. For the contagious illness
category, the word ‘germ’ was not used because children may choose this response
on the basis of familiarity with the term rather than biological knowledge. Instead
the words ‘bugs’ or ‘invisible particles’ were employed (Kalish, 1997). The levels of
responses provided were consistent across all ailment types:
Cause and recovery:
4. Biological level: knowledge of internal bodily processes.
3. Physical level: focus on external rather than internal processes.
2. Incorrect mechanism level: inappropriate mechanism for ailment in question.
1. Non-biological level: reasoning about illness in terms of psychological processes.
Time from cause to effect:
3. Biological level: knowledge about the delay factors in illness.
2. Intermediate level: some indication of delay factors in illness.
1. Non-biological level: no knowledge of delay factors in illness.
Procedure
Pre-test interviews
All children were interviewed individually with the order of ailments and xed choice
answers randomized for each child to reduce order effects. If children failed to recall the
answers provided, or if their attention was distracted, the response options were
repeated in the same order one additional time. Children were not provided with any
feedback concerning the correctness of their answers during the interview. On average
interviews took 10 minutes, with no child taking more than 15 minutes. Children were
highly motivated and engaged in the task, and the pictures employed successfully
focused their attention on the questions.
Storybook interventions
The intervention took place 1 week after pre-test. The intervention groups were taken
one at a time to a separate room and asked to listen carefully to the three short stories
comprising the storybook. The stories were presented in a standard order to each
group: chickenpox (contagious), asthma (non-contagious), and scraped knee (injury).
After every story each child in the group was asked individually the rst ‘symptom
knowledge’ intervention question in front of the group. The second question relating
to ‘causes’ was asked and responses were recorded (using pen and paper) allowing
the interviewer to remind children of their ideas. If children did not offer an answer, the
question was repeated once more. When all children had been asked the individual
question the interviewer then prompted: ‘do you all think that everyone has the same
Children’s concepts of illness 135
idea?’ then the interviewer highlighted existing conicts and agreements by repeating
the answers provided by the children and indicating explicitly where conict and
agreement had arisen. Children were then instructed to discuss their answers and come
to an agreement on the best answer. This standard questioning and discussion format
was repeated for the two remaining discussion questions (time from cause to effect;
and recovery factors) in turn. The whole procedure was repeated for each of the three
short stories. Overall the interventions lasted between 20 and 30 minutes, with younger
children completing the task more quickly. All children appeared to enjoy the stories
and accompanying pictures. They were eager to participate and discuss their ideas
about illness, often huddling together to debate the main issues enthusiastically. The
presence of the interviewer did not appear to stie children’s discussions or distract
them from the task.
Post-tests
One week after the group interventions, all children were individually interviewed
using the same materials and procedures as for the pre-test.
Results
The results are presented rst in terms of age differences in pre-test scores. Analysis
of the effects of the intervention are then presented comparing 4- and 7-year-olds and
intervention and control children in terms of their pre- to post-test difference scores
(post-test minus pre-test scores). In line with Springer and Keil (1991) it was reasoned
that the levels of explanation associated with the response choices conformed to an
interval scale and thus data were analysed using parametric statistics. In addition, each
child was classied in terms of amount of improvement following the intervention
(improved, no change, or regressed). Analysis of these re-coded data using x2 tests
considered associations between categories of improvement and age and intervention
condition separately.
Pre-test scores
Table 1 illustrates the patterns of responses for each item. For the Causes of illness
across all items, the preferred type of explanation among 4-year-olds was level 2,
whereas 7-year-olds preferred explanations at levels 3 and 4. In relation to Time, 4-year-
olds most often chose level 2 explanations whereas 7-year-olds selected explanations at
levels 3 and 1 most frequently. For Recovery factors, the majority of 4-year-olds chose
level 2 whereas 7-year-olds most often chose level 3.
A series of independent t tests were computed to test for age differences in levels
of explanation, for each item separately. As Table 2 shows, 7-year-olds selected signi-
cantly higher levels of explanations than 4-year-olds for all items except for chicken-
pox time, chickenpox recovery, cold time, and asthma time.
Level of response 4 yr 7 yr 4 yr 7 yr 4 yr 7 yr 4 yr 7 yr 4 yr 7 yr 4 yr 7 yr
Causes
4 10 13 0 20 7 43 0 27 20 53 10 73
3 37 80 27 67 17 23 3 27 40 37 30 20
2 47 7 53 13 10 30 63 43 27 10 33 7
1 7 0 20 0 67 3 33 3 13 0 27 0
Time
3 20 17 20 13 20 10 23 60 37 73 27 80
2 50 20 50 33 47 33 33 27 23 20 47 17
1 30 63 30 53 33 57 43 13 40 7 27 3
Recovery
4 7 3 3 13 13 60 3 50 7 33 13 37
3 37 30 30 83 7 37 23 47 40 60 33 43
2 43 67 40 3 53 3 50 3 40 7 40 20
1 13 0 27 0 27 0 23 0 13 0 13 0
Note: The higher the numerical value in the ‘level of response’ column the more advanced the level of
response.
(intervention vs. control). There was a main effect of age (F(1, 56) = 5.12, p = .03) with
4-year-olds improving most (means: 4 years 3.57, 7 years = 1.37). There was also a
main effect of condition (F(1, 56) = 9.95, p = .003) with children in the intervention
condition showing the greatest pre-to post-test improvement regardless of age (means:
intervention = 4.0, control = 0.93). There was no interaction affect between inter-
vention condition and age.
Post hoc independent t tests examined age differences between levels of pre-to post-
test improvement for each item individually. As Table 2 illustrates, 4-year-olds showed
signicantly greater post-intervention improvement in explanations only for asthma
recovery, cancer cause, cancer recovery, and scraped knee recovery. Similar analyses
were performed to compare pre- to post-test improvements between intervention and
control groups. The intervention groups improved signicantly more than controls only
in relation to cold cause (t(58) = 2.31, p < .05) and it should be noted that this single
signicant nding may be due to chance.
Children were additionally classied (based on difference scores) as improving,
exhibiting no change, or regressing in scores as a result of the intervention. Chi-square
analyses examined associations between levels of post-test change and age, and then
condition, for each item. Table 3 shows signicant associations between age and levels
of improvement for cold recovery ( x2 (2) = 6.79, p < .05), asthma cause ( x2 (2) = 9.33,
p < .01), asthma recovery ( x2 (2) = 8.64, p < .05), cancer cause ( x2 (2) = 8.98, p < .05),
scraped knee recovery ( x2 (2) = 6.13, p < .05), and broken arm cause ( x2 (2) = 6.82,
Children’s concepts of illness 137
Table 2. Mean pre-test and post-test scores for each illness item as a function of age
Pre-test Post-test
p < .05). These analyses indicated more improvement and less regression at post-test
among the 4-year-olds. Table 4 shows there were no signicant associations between
intervention condition and level of post-intervention change.
Discussion
All children selected responses to the items in a way that suggests they were drawing
upon na¨õ ve concepts of illness by age 4. However, it should be noted that the forced-
choice explanation method has limitations. In this study, children may have chosen the
explanation that included salient words such as ‘medicine’, ‘caught it’ and ‘bugs’.
Alternatively, they may have simply repeated the last option given, or regurgitated one
they could remember. They may also have responded to the length or complexity of
the responses provided, ‘making different explanation types comparable with respect to
the informativeness of the explanation . . . is no easy matter’ (Carey, 1995, p. 297), and
this may have introduced bias into the data. All these ways of responding to the
questions fail to focus on the conceptual content of the explanation provided. However,
systematic patterns of response were evident in these data, indicating that children
were, indeed, responding on the basis of their underlying na¨õ ve concepts of illness.
138 Joanne M. Williams and Lynne M. Binnie
Table 3. Percentage (N ) of children in each age group showing different levels of pre- to post-test
change for each illness item
4 years 7 years
The pre-test results indicate that for almost all of the items there was a signicant age
improvement in knowledge between 4 and 7 years. These age changes indicate an
increasingly biological understanding of illness and injuries. This developmental
improvement is congruent with the ndings of many other studies (Kalish, 1997;
Perrin & Gerrity, 1981; Siegal, 1988). Nevertheless, responses were not at ceiling level
even among 7-year-olds; consequently, there is scope for interventions to improve
knowledge at these ages.
Within this pattern of general age improvement, there were four items that showed
no change in response with age: chickenpox time, chickenpox recovery, cold time, and
asthma time. Lack of change in these items highlights children’s comparative difculty
in understanding time course factors. Inspection of responses revealed that 7-year-olds
expected ailment onset to be immediate regardless of ailment type. In consequence
they were sometimes correct (i.e. injuries); however, for other items this led to the
lowest score (e.g. contagious). These ndings support and extend Kalish’s (1997)
conclusion that children generally predict that all outcomes of illness will occur immedi-
ately and thus they have ‘a poor understanding of the actual bodily processes involved’
(p. 79). In this study children were found to have a comparatively more sophisticated
understanding of illness causes. This can be explained with reference to Sigelman,
Maddock, Epstein, and Carpenter (1993), who suggest that children are more likely to
encounter information about the causes of illness than other illness processes. Further-
more, Kalish (1998) argues strongly that young children specically seek out causal
information and that this is a central element of their development of illness concepts.
Children’s concepts of illness 139
Table 4. Percentage (N ) of children in each intervention condition showing different levels of pre- to
post-test change for each illness item
Intervention Control
The pre-test data also indicate that knowledge of injury exemplars (scraped knee
and broken arm) was more advanced at both ages than knowledge of contagious and
non-contagious illness exemplars. This might be the result of more extensive direct
experience or injury, or because examples of minor trauma involve fewer complex and
unobservable bodily processes than the exemplars of contagious and non-contagious
illness included in this study. This nding highlights children’s ability to conceptual-
ize injuries, a fact which has been overlooked by previous research (an exception
being Coppens, 1986). Compared to injuries, knowledge of the contagious and non-
contagious illness exemplars was less well-developed among children in this study.
It has been suggested that children’s difculty with non-contagious illness causation
may reect an over-extension of the concept of contagion to non-contagious ailments
(Kister & Patterson, 1980) in this study this was especially the case in relation to asthma.
There is little evidence, in the pre-test data, to suggest that children hold a ‘germ
theory’ of illness across the range of exemplars used in this study. Instead these data
suggest the existence of potentially three overlapping but somewhat distinct under-
standings of illness, each of which improves with age: a theory of contagious illness;
a theory of injuries; and factual knowledge of non-contagious illness. Children of each
age group appeared to respond to both contagious illnesses (chickenpox and the cold)
with similar reasoning, suggesting that this knowledge may be theoretically driven
although not fully biological. Thus, seven 7-year-olds primarily selected mechanistic and
physical responses, not internal biological explanations. Understanding of contagion is
likely to become more biological with age as children increasingly attend to specic
details of individual agents of infection (Kalish, 1999). We contend that children also
140 Joanne M. Williams and Lynne M. Binnie
have a rmly established theory of injury that is also based on a behavioural/mechanistic
understanding. This explanatory framework provides children with all the information
they require of injuries in order to arrive at correct predictions and explanations, thus
there is less scope for a genuinely biological theory to emerge for this ailment type.
Finally, in relation to non-contagious illness, children chose different types of responses
for asthma and cancer. This might signal that there is less theoretical structure
to children’s understanding of non-contagious illness because there is no single unify-
ing biological cause or effect in these ailments. For non-contagious illness, we propose
that children may develop their ideas on the basis of accretion of facts about a range
of separate illnesses without developing an over-arching theoretical framework, as they
seem to do for contagious illness and injury. As a consequence they may on occasion
misapply their theory of contagion to non-contagious illness (e.g. asthma in this study).
Future research on illness should explore not only contagion but also injury and non-
contagious illness. Kalish (1999) has stated that ‘. . . infection [contamination and
contagion] denes illness for young children’. However, it is clear from the ndings
reported here that it may be inappropriate to assume, based on the evidence available,
that na¨õ ve theories of contagion are central to children’s understanding of illness as
a whole.
Turning to patterns of change at post-test, there was overall improvement in
scores at post-test for both ages, showing that familiarity with the interview materials
and the cognitive processes concerning illness which these provoke, aided learning.
Importantly, however, there was a signicant age difference in the amount of global
improvement in understanding at post-test, with 4-year-olds showing greater levels of
improvement than 7-year-olds. This implies that 4-year-olds are ‘ready’ (Watson, 1998) to
learn about illness concepts and possibly other biological concepts too. The implica-
tion is that introducing health education to young children is not only appropriate
but may also help to develop a rmer basis for understanding illness on which to build
later educational input.
Importantly, this study showed that providing 4- and 7-year-olds with indirect
experience and correct factual information, accompanied with a guided peer discussion
about illness, signicantly increased their knowledge, compared to a control group.
Unfortunately, in the present study it is impossible to unpack which specic aspects
of the intervention were associated with conceptual advance. Was the key factor the
factual information provided in the story, or group discussion, or specic aspects of
group discussions? Further research to explore these issues is required in order to
develop age-appropriate health education interventions and also arrive at a clearer
understanding of the process of conceptual change in relation to illness, and biology
more generally. From these data it is also extremely difcult to attribute the general
advancements among the training group to improvements in understanding of specic
ailment types or illness processes. These data suggest that overall there were incre-
mental changes in most items in favour of improvement; however, no clear pattern
emerged. Thus further research is also necessary to explore whether improvements in
knowledge are primarily the result of improvement in trained exemplars, or
whether children learn new knowledge from the specic exemplars included in the
intervention which they use to generate theories that are subsequently applied across
various types of illnesses.
Asecond approach to analysing these data was to classify children in each condition
as exhibiting improvements, no change, or regression, as a function of the intervention.
Analyses for each item separately revealed no associations between levels of change and
Children’s concepts of illness 141
intervention condition. Thus patterns of change were broadly similar across the two
conditions, with substantial numbers showing no change (ranging from 8 to 20 out of
30 children), followed by improvement (ranging from 4 to 16 children), and nally
regression (1 to 11 children). These analyses indicated that within the general global
improvement of the training condition as indicated by analysis of means, there were
a signicant number of children who did not show an increase in knowledge for
individual items as a function of the intervention. Furthermore, the nding that some
children’s knowledge regressed following the intervention highlights the potential
dangers of providing health education that is not adequately structured around
children’s existing knowledge, fails to take account of their illness experience, or fails
to actively engage them in the task. Further research is required to establish which,
if any, of these factors contributes to children’s lack of progress.
In conclusion, young children exhibit a great deal of na¨ve
õ knowledge about illness.
In the strictest sense this knowledge would not be classed as biological; however,
according to Hergenrather and Rabinowitz (1991) their na¨õ ve knowledge forms the
‘primary conceptual and explanatory framework’ (1991, p. 956) from which a more
biological theory develops. With increased experience (direct and indirect) of illness,
children gradually become aware of the physiological and biological processes involved
in the cause, time course and recovery factors involved in different types of illness.
Providing children with factual information concerning illness and the opportunity to
discuss their ideas and understandings of illness is potentially productive in assisting
this process. However, the intervention has to be closely tailored to children’s existing
knowledge. More research is required in order to elaborate the processes involved in
learning about illness so as to reduce the possibility of children failing to improve or
even regressing in knowledge following educational interventions.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Iain Wallace for his assistance during the collection of data for this
study.
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Contagious illness
· Chickenpox
Causes
4. She breathed the same air as her friend who had chickenpox and the tiny
living things in the air got into her body and fought her good cells, giving
her spots.
3. She touched her friend who had chickenpox and the chickenpox bugs got onto
her skin, giving her spots.
2. She had eaten too many sweets.
1. She had not done her homework and was worried about it.
Time
3. She carried on playing with her friend, then went to school feeling ne, then after
a few days she got chickenpox.
144 Joanne M. Williams and Lynne M. Binnie
2. She carried on playing with her friend for a few hours, then she got chickenpox.
1. She got chickenpox straight away as she was playing with her friend.
Recovery
4. The good cells in her body killed the bad enemy cells.
3. She put cream on her chickenpox spots making them go away.
2. She put a bandage on which cured her.
1. Just by wanting to she made the chickenpox go away.
· Cold
Causes
4. She breathed the same air as a friend who had a cold and the invisible things in
the air got into her body where they started to ght good cells.
3. She went out in the cold and the cold got up her nose and made her feel ill.
2. She had been eating too many sweets.
1. She had not done her homework and was worried about it.
Time
3. She felt ne for a few days, went to school then she got the cold.
2. She carried on playing for a few hours feeling ne then she got the cold.
1. Straight away as she was playing with her friend she got the cold.
Recovery
4. The good cells in her body killed the bad enemy cells.
2. She rubbed some cream on her nose and the cold went away.
3. She took some medicine which cured her.
1. Just by wanting to she made the cold go away.
Non-contagious illness
· Asthma
Causes
4. Pollution touched the tubes in his lungs making them too narrow to get
enough air through.
3. Pollution touched the skin on his chest and made it hard for him to breathe.
2. He touched and breathed the same air as a friend who had asthma and caught it
off him.
1. He had not done his homework and was worried about it.
Time
3. He felt bad straight away.
2. He carried on for a few hours then felt bad.
1. He felt ne for a few days then felt bad.
Children’s concepts of illness 145
Recovery
4. He breathed in medicine that helped the tubes in his lungs to open again.
3. He rubbed cream onto his chest which helped him breathe easier.
2. He put a bandage on his chest which cured him.
1. Just by wanting to he could make the asthma attack go away.
· Cancer
Causes
4. The smoke from too many cigarettes stopped his lungs cleaning themselves,
turning good cells in his lungs into a lump of bad cells.
3. The smoke from too many cigarettes touched the skin on his chest and gave him
cancer.
2. He touched his friend who had cancer and caught it off him.
1. He was worried about work.
Time
3. He got cancer a long time afterwards.
2. He got cancer a few hours later.
1. He got cancer straight away.
Recovery
4. Special medicine killed the lump of bad cells and made the cancer go away.
3. He rubbed cream on his chest which made the cancer go away.
2. He put on a bandage which cured the cancer.
1. Just by wanting to he made the cancer go away.
Injury
· Broken arm
Causes
4. He fell off a climbing frame and banged his arm hard on the ground which made
the bone break.
3. He fell off a climbing frame and hit his arm on the ground.
2. He shared food with a friend who had a broken arm and caught if off him.
1. He had not done his homework and was worried about it and this made his arm
break.
Time
3. His arm broke straight away.
2. His arm broke a few hours later.
1. His arm broke a few days later.
Recovery
4. Cells inside the bone grew again and joined the bone back together.
146 Joanne M. Williams and Lynne M. Binnie
3. A plaster cast made the arm get better.
2. He took some medicine which cured him.
1. Just by wanting to he could make his arm get better.
· Scraped knee
Causes
4. She fell over a sharp rock which cut the tubes in the skin which carry blood and
made the blood come out.
3. She fell over a sharp rock which touched her skin and made the blood come out.
2. She shared food with friend who had a cut and caught it off him.
1. She had not done her homework and was worried about it and this cut her knee.
Time
3. She started to bleed straight away.
2. She started to bleed a few hours later.
1. She started to bleed a few days later.
Recovery
4. Good cells in the blood made a sticky plug which went hard and helped the cut
get better.
3. A plaster made the cut get better.
2. She took some medicine which cured her.
1. Just by wanting to she made the cut get better.