Our purpose is to describe and analyze the everyday out-of-school life experiences of chronically ill school age children and the circumstances and conditions which shape their interests and activities.
The aim i s to study the way children use time. The use of time is a proxy--an indicator of what matters to children and their parents. Equally important, a child's use of time may enable the researchers to identify aspects of the experience of childhood that will affect the quality of their later adult life. The research questions are: 1) What kinds of things do chronically ill children do when they are not in school?; 2) What are the effects of family life, family structure and socioeconomic status on children's out-of-school life?; 3) What are the range of opportunities and constraints that shape children's time use and their attitudes toward time use outside of school?; 4) What roles do neighborhoods and municipal services have in chronically ill children's out-of-school activities?; 5) How do cross-setting transitions and linkages differ for chronically ill children from varying backgrounds?; 6) Does the development of the child's ability to function outside the home depend on the extent and the manner in which parents and others engage with him or her in joint activites? and 7) Does the capacity of the parents' to engage in such joint behaviors depend on the extent to which there exists external support systems that provide them with the opportunity, assistance, status and resources? This is a sample survey of out-of-school time use by chronically ill school age children. The complete project will be conducted in Alabama and California. Collecting data in two different regions of the country may add to our understanding of the many links between different ecologies and variations in human development. A total of 200 children and their parents will be surveyed in Alabama. Data will be collected through interviews of the children and their mothers at their homes with time use instruments. The child will be interviewed with a 59 item questionnaire which examines children's time use out-of-school. The parents will complete an 82 item questionnaire evluating their values, attitudes and opinions about the child's activities and childrearing styles. They will also complete a 14 item medical history questionnaire. Data analysis will use descriptive statistics.
