This descriptive study will use a three factor (environment, event, child/mother pain) factoral design with one repeated measure (event) to examine specific measures of maternal and child stress and child pain that occur at selected stress points during the hospitalization of children who require surgery. One group of children (N=40) will receive postoperative care in the pediatric intensive care unit. The other group of children will receive postoperative care on a general pediatric unit. Autonomic arousal (skin conductance) will be measured as an indicator of psychophysiological stress in children and mothers. In addition, specific estimates of stress and pain will be obtained, including: Children's pain intensity (self-reported), mother's estimates of children's pain, parental stress, maternal anxiety and child distress. Analysis will involve the use of descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlation matrices, and MANOVA. Several instruments will be tested for reliability and validity. Qualitative data will be collected during maternal interviews and ethnographic analysis will take place in year 03 in conjunction with an Independent Study in qualitative methods.
