Quality Of Life And Its Influencing Factors On Children In Early Pubertal Timing In Chongqing

Objective To develop the quality of life for children in puberty and to provide a basis for further development of the measurement tools for the quality of life for children in puberty.Then to investigate and compare the quality of life on children in early pubertal timing or not,and to explore the influencing factors of the quality of life on children in early pubertal timing for providing a basis for future intervention.Methods 1.Initial entry pool for the scale was constructed by literature review and panel discussion.Initial scale was constructed through a small-group study of children from Grade 5.A total of 511 children in grade 4-8 were selected for pre-survey.Seven kinds of screening methods and exploratory factor analysis were used to screen the initial scale to form a formal test scale,and the feasibility,reliability and validity were evaluated.2.Stratified cluster sampling was used to recruit 3486 children in grade 4-9 from 4 primary schools and 4 secondary schools in urban and rural areas from a district of Chongqing.All the children were surveyed with “Quality of life for children in puberty”,“Puberty Development Scale(PDS)”,and so on.The influencing factors for quality of life on children in early pubertal timing were analyzed by multiple stepwise regression.Results There were 39 items for ten factors and four dimensions which were physiology,psychology,society and puberty after professional screening and statistical screening.Preliminary evaluation showed the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the total scale and the four dimensions were 0.89,0.81,0.77,0.85 and 0.64,respectively.While the test-retest Pearson correlation coefficient for the total scale and the four dimensions were 0.88,0.76,0.78,0.82 and 0.72,respectively.Confirmatory factor analysis showed the model well fitted,which were χ2/df=4.24,CFI=0.95,NFI=0.94,NNFI=0.92,GFI=0.96,AGFI=0.92 and RMSEA=0.08.The scale of “Inventory of Subjective Life Quality(ISLQ)” was used as a standard to measure the scale of “Quality of life for children in puberty”,and the correlation coefficient between the two scales was 0.76.The prevalence of children in early pubertal timing,on time,late pubertal timing were 20.0%,64.1% and 15.9%,respectively.The total score of quality of life on children in early pubertal timing(134.99±18.75)was significantly lower than normal children(139.64±18.71)and children in late pubertal timing(139.73±17.52)(P<0.05).Though the dimensions of physiology,psychology and society showed the same result,the score of dimension of puberty which children in early pubertal timing(20.29±3.88)and normal(20.07±3.76)were significantly higher than children in late pubertal timing(19.70±3.68)(P<0.05).Univariate analysis showed that degree of education for parents,relationship of family,academic achievement,school environment,the number of close friends and about 15 factors had impact on quality of life on children in early pubertal timing.Multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that depression,poor relationship of family,few close friends and lower score of attitude for adolescence were main influencing factors for the quality of life on children in early pubertal timing.Conclusions The quality of life for children in puberty has good reliability and validity through preliminary evaluation,and it can be used as a tool to evaluate the quality of life on children in puberty in the formal investigation.The quality of life on children in early pubertal timing was lower than normal children and children in late pubertal timing.Intervention measures from improvement of depression,relationship of family,the number of close friends and attitude for adolescence are considered to improve the quality of life on children in early pubertal timing.