Educational technology for promoting parental self-efficacy in controlling childhood asthma

SUMMARY

Objective: to verify the self-efficacy of parents and caregivers in controlling childhood asthma before and after an educational intervention and to associate the scores with sociodemographic factors. Methods: quasi-experimental study, with 65 parents and caregivers of children with asthma. The Self-Efficacy and Their Child’s Level of Asthma Control scale – Brazilian version – was used before and 30 days after the intervention with the reading of the booklet “Are you able to control your child’s asthma – let’s learn together?” For the analysis, McNemar’s Chi-square and Wilcoxon statistical tests were used. Results: after 30 days,the effect of the intervention demonstrated statistical significance between high self-efficacy scores and the following variables: marital status (Odds Ratio:2.6;p=0.001), family income (Odds Ratio:3.4;p=0.001) and Bolsa Família Program benefit (Odds Ratio:2.9;p=0.001). Conclusion: the educational booklet was shown to be effective in increasing the self-efficacy of parents and caregivers in the control and management of childhood asthma.