Childhood asthma in low-income hispanic and non-hispanic white families in a rural state: The impact-on-family scale

We measured the impact on family functioning reported by low-income Hispanic and non-Hispanic White parents of children (N= 415, mean age 8.7 years) with asthma living in a rural state. A number of factors were associated with impact, using the Impact-on-Family Scale (Stein and Jessop, 1985). In order of importance, the factors were number of school days missed, nighttime symptoms, number of as-needed medications, and Spanish version of the tool. These factors accounted for approximately 13 % of the variance in total impact score. There were no differences in impact score between urban and rural parents or by ethnicity. The findings indicate that perceived parental impact is not strongly associated with commonly measured demographic and morbidity measures. The relation of these data to the recommendations of the National Asthma Guidelines (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 1997) is discussed.