Perceptions about wellbeing: from a child's to their parent's perspective

This study presents exploration of children’s and parent’s perspective in domains that address the general understanding about wellbeing of children that live in Tirana. The main focus of this study are issues like... [ view full abstract ]

This study presents exploration of children’s and parent’s perspective in domains that address the general understanding about wellbeing of children that live in Tirana. The main focus of this study are issues like wellness, health, and physical development; emotional development; child’s relationships; growing up and transition to adolescence; family and parenting; community and neighbourhood; parent-child relationship; perception of being a parent; family decision-making and parental concerns and aspirations for their children.

The method used to undertake this study are semi-structured face to face interviews with 10 year old children and their parents and also techniques like ice-breaker activities: my passport, draw and write technique (Backett-Milburn & McKie, 1999) ; visual prompts: children’s body image Scale (Truby & Paxton, 2002) ; activity sheets: life ladder (Cantril, 1965); my activities calendar, and my family and me map (Hill, Laybourn & Borland, 1996).

Regarding the data analysis of this study, a combination of inductive and deductive coding is used. The coding structures for inductive analysis are based on the topics that are covered by the interview schedules which map onto the domains of the main study. The questions asked to the participants are framed by the ecological perspective on child development . Every interview is analysed by topic. The qualitative sample is stratified according to socio-economic status, rurality, and number of resident parents.

Some of the conclusions of this study are that the children expected that they will be more interested in their appearance as teenagers. They acknowledged socio-emotional changes that they expected to experience during adolescence, such as maturing and becoming more independent. They appeared comfortable with their physical appearance and generally happy in their skin. They possess lot of self-confidence and have positive perception of themselves with some minor exeptions. The relationship between the children and their mothers was particularly strong.