Traumatic Brain Injury in School-Age Children: What Do Parents Know?

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has major implications for learning and development. Despite the high number of injuries reported by national statistics, school-age children with TBI are largely underserved in the school setting. Researchers have argued several reasons as to why this discrepancy exists including parental impact. While TBI knowledge has been previously measured in a variety of populations, little has been done to determine what parents of children with TBI understand about the condition. Students with TBI often require additional supports to foster learning; therefore, it is crucial that parents are fully informed about their child’s injury so they can advocate for essential educational services in the school setting. To further this claim, the current study investigated whether parental knowledge impacts the presence of educational supports for their child. Additionally, uncovering inaccuracies regarding TBI will assist in the development of targeted interventions for parents. Participants were recruited from an online research platform called Prolific. A total of 415 parents of school-age children participated in the study. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire and indicated if their child had previously suffered from TBI. If participants endorsed an injury, they were provided an additional questionnaire that inquired about their child’s injury. Ultimately, 360 parents of uninjured children and 55 parents of injured children were included in the analysis. To measure TBI knowledge, all participants completed the Common Misconceptions of TBI (CM-TBI) questionnaire. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to compare group means. For the TBI group, logistic regression was utilized to determine if parental knowledge of TBI predicted the probability that a child received formal educational supports. Results found no differences in TBI knowledge between parents of injured and uninjured children, suggesting that parents of injured children have no additional knowledge of TBI despite their personal experience with the injury. Furthermore, parental knowledge was not found to predict educational supports; however, more research may be needed in this area. Overall, these results argue that improvements in communication and intervention for parents following pediatric TBI are warranted.