Social Interactions Between Children With Cancer and Their Peers: Teacher Ratings

Abstract

Compared children (ages 8-18) with cancer (n = 24) and matched classroom control children (n = 24) using a modified version of the Revised Class Play (RCP). A wide variety of malignancies were represented, except brain tumors. Childrens' classroom teachers completed the RCP, an instrument modified to obtain teachers' impressions of three fundamental dimensions of interpersonal style: sociability-leadership, aggressive-disruptive, sensitive-isolated. Relative to the matched controls, children with cancer were perceived by teachers as (a) less sociable and prone towards leadership and (b) more socially isolated and withdrawn. These findings suggest a need for long-term psychosocial interventions oriented towards peer relationships of children with cancer.

Social, emotional, and behavioral functioning of children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis

“…Ascertainment bias can confound results and/or limit the generalizability of findings (57,58). A minimal amount of work has focused on peer relationships for children with JRA, despite considerable data showing that the measures of peer relationships used in the present study are an excellent index of current social competence that also predict adjustment in adolescence and adulthood (32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43).…”

“…Factor analysis of these roles has revealed 3 underlying constructs: 1) sociability/leadership (e.g., someone who is a good leader, somebody who has many friends), 2) aggressive/disruptive (e.g., a person who gets into fights a lot, somebody who picks on other children), and 3) sensitive/isolated (e.g., someone who is usually sad, someone who is often left out). Dimension scores of the RCP have been shown to be both internally consistent (peer ␣ values range from 0.81 to 0.95; teacher ␣ values range from 0.58 to 0.76; self ␣ values range from 0.71 to 0.99) and stable; RCP-peer correlations across a 17-month interval range from 0.63 to 0.65 (31,32,35). Peer nominations on the RCP correlate significantly with teacher (0.35-0.51) (31,36) and self (0.14-0.22) (37) nominations.…”

“…Prior to conducting analyses, Z-score transformations were completed on the data from each classroom to adjust for unequal class sizes. Based on previous work using these measures with children with chronic illness (27,31,35,41), our primary analytic strategy for hypothe- To reduce the probability of Type I error, Holm's procedure was used (53). The P values presented in the tables were not adjusted.…”

Social competence in childhood brain tumor survivors: a comprehensive review

“…Specifically, greater utilization of quality of life measures (35% vs. 15%) and a decreased use of sociometric measures was observed. In fact, none of the studies in the current review employed sociometric measures, previously implemented by Noll and colleagues [54,55], to examine peer relationships among children and adolescents with cancer, including brain tumor survivors. Although sociometric measures have been criticized for relying too heavily on popularity and likeability [56], peer reports are critical to our understanding of brain tumor survivors' social competence, given the importance of returning to normal life after treatment.…”

The prevalence of overweight and obesity in pediatric survivors of cancer

“…15,30,31 Factors contributing to reductions in physical activity warrant further investigation, as does the impact of psychosocial factors, 32,33 such as the poor self-esteem, poor social skills, and troubled peer relationships experienced by some ALL survivors. [34][35][36] The patients with ALL had a significantly increased mean BMI at the end of therapy compared with that at diagnosis, and this increase persisted at the most recent follow-up. This finding suggests that efforts aimed at preventing overweight Table III in patients with ALL should commence during therapy.…”