Piloting a study to examine children’s understandings of chronic pain and coping
Abstract
Many of our understandings of how children conceptualize and cope with chronic pain are drawn from adult accounts or extrapolated from research in adult populations. Accordingly, there is scant knowledge relating to children’s own experiences of chronic pain and coping. This study begins to address this gap by piloting a methodology combining arts-based methods with semi-structured interviews to generate data with children aged 6-13 years. Participants with chronic pain were invited to draw and/or photograph what represents a ‘good pain day’ and ‘a bad pain day’, before engaging in a tailored, semi-structured interview. Results, interpreted using a constructivist lens, contribute modest preliminary insight into children’s understandings of chronic pain and coping, and lend support to the quality of data generated using this methodology. Insights pertaining to what worked well, and lessons learned regarding the methodology are contained herein for reference prior to producing scaled-up versions of this work.