Insight into childhood development problems
Understanding relation between childhood behavior/health problems and gender in children between 0–13 years old
Introduction
Several studies have shown that gender is a significant predictor of development in childhood and boys are usually at greater vulnerability than girls. It is important to note that gender differences in health appear early. If boys are born prematurely they tend to have more neonatal complications than girls. Since there is an evidence that infant health affects each gender differently I was curious to examine its effects on older children. I analyze boys and girls of age between 0–13 years old within group of health and childhood behavior problems. Health group contains following illnesses: asthma, heart condition, chronic condition, children with special needs, attention problem, children who require more medical help, limited ability, PT/OT (aka: special therapy, speech, physical therapy, occupational therapy and/or psychological services), IEP — Individualized Education Program for special kids, and IFSP — Individual Family Service Plan. For childhood behavior problems I look into the following: ADHD, behavior problem, AD, ASD, aggressive behavior, PDD, and AS.
The sample data used in this analysis is obtained using the Gallup Panel’s population and consists of 1,575 parents. The Gallup Panel is a nationally representative pool of over 47,000 American households and 65,000 individuals ages 13 years and older who have agreed to participate in research studies on an ongoing basis. Panel members cover the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The data is very interesting and it can potentially answer many questions. However, I am primarily going to focus on the following questions:
- What are the five most common childhood development problems?
- How are children affected by multiple development problems?
- Is there a gender based effect among children with multiple problems?
Let me start by discussing some general information regarding the data.
In this sample each family have at least one child. Since there can be more than one kid per family, out of 1575 families the total number of children is 2,806. Among these children 47% are girls and 53% are boys.
29% of all children have at least one development problem. Boys seem to be in majority among kids with at least one problem compared to girls.
1. What are the five most common childhood problems?
From the bar graph below we can see that the top five most common childhood development problems are PT/OT, asthma, more medical, special needs, and ADHD. 331 children have a need for PT/OT. 292 children suffer from asthma. 281 children require more medical or mental services than usual. 197 children need help with special needs and 186 have ADHD.
Three most common childhood problems among boys are PT/OT, more medical needs, and asthma, for girls, interestingly, it is asthma, PT/OT, and then more medical needs. Looking at the bar chart below it is clear that for each childhood development problem, boys are more affected than the girls — with the ratio of girls to boys being the highest in chronic condition 0.82 and lowest in AS 0.09. Although, the data is almost equally distributed between gender I cannot conclude that children with AS have highest impact by gender due to not significant representation of the data for this particular illness.
2. How are children affected by multiple development problems?
Among 827 children with childhood development problems there are 384 of them who have only one problem.
Among those who have more than one problem 14% of them require more medical help, also 14% of children have to have PT/OT, and 10% need help with special needs.
Surprisingly about half of kids with only one childhood problem are affected by asthma. The second most common among children with one problem is PT/OT which is about 17%.
3. Is there a gender based effect among children with multiple problems?
It also appears that boys are more prone to have more than one childhood development problem than girls. About 67% of children who have more than one problem are boys.
Because boys tend to be more affected by several development problems I want to find out if there is a relation between development types and gender.
From the barplot below there is a clear contrast between boys and girls for each type of development problem for children with more than one problem. Moreover, girls who have more than one problem are more likely to have more medical needs compare to other types of development problems, boys on the other hand are likely to undergo PT/OT.
Next, I want to look into how most common type for boys and girls correlate to other types of childhood development problems and if there is a significant difference in how each type affects boys and girls. Hence, I only focus on the data that have children with more than one problem. Just to mention once again that, boys seems to undergo PT/OT more than girls and girls have more chance of having more medical needs.
I find that boys and girls who need PT/OT are more likely to also have more medical needs, special needs, and be enrolled into IEP. However, there is no significant difference between gender and PT/OT type that is correlated with other development type of problems. As it can be observed there is only a slight difference between gender in limited ability. It appears that a number of girls who need help with PT/OT also affected slightly more by limited ability than a number of boys. Girls with PT/OT are also more likely to have chronic condition than boys.
The same correlation can be observed in boys and girls with more medical needs. Surprisingly, 10% of girls who need more medical help also have chronic condition as oppose to 5% boys with the same type of development problem. Boys with more medical type, on the other hand, are more likely to be on ASD (autism spectrum disorder) compare to girls.
Conclusion
This short blog reviewed some of the impact of childhood development problems on gender. As it can be concluded that boys are at higher risk of developing behavior or/and health problem than girls. It is also important to keep a track on additional problems that might develop later, especially with boys as they tend to develop more than one childhood problem.
Couple of key points from this blog post:
- Boys seem to be more affected by childhood behavior or/and health problems. They also tend to be more prone for more than one development problem.
- The five most common childhood problem are: PT/OT, asthma, children with more medical needs, special needs and ADHD in children between age 0–13.
- Among girls asthma seems to be the most common health issue whereas boys are highly likely to undergo PT/OT.
- Interestingly, 42% of children with only one childhood development problem have asthma.
More detailed information of this work is here.
Reference
- J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs. 2010 Sep; 39(5): 536–549. doi: 10.1111/j.1552–6909.2010.01171.x
- The data is obtained from Child and Family Data Archive. You can find the data https://www.childandfamilydataarchive.org/cfda/archives/cfda/studies/31401.
- Montes, Guillermo. The Impact of Childhood Behavior Problems on Child Care
and Employment Decision-Making: A Nationally Representative Panel Study.
ICPSR31401-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research [distributor], 2013–03–22.
http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR31401.v1
