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Abstract
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Obtaining an available information on health concerns of parents of school-age children and furthermore developing the sound policy for the public on health education, this study was conducted during Nov.- Dec. 1985 in the four selected areas; Seoul, large, middle and small city, and farming and fishery villages for 3,337 parents of schoolchildren in Korea.
In this study, parents complected a questionnaire containing 34 items related to health concerns(e.g. drinking alcohol, air pollution, cancer, etc. see Table 4 and Fig. 2). For each health items, respondents were asked to indicate a choice between three levels of concern; "Very high concern", "Moderate concern", "Little concern", and "No opinion". An analysis of responses indicated that most of the top ten health concerns identified by parents as cancer, abortions among high school students, medical malpractice, water pollution, traffic accidents, air pollution, suicide of parents and homicide of offspring, heart disease, venereal diseases, and high blood pressure in that order. Those health problems about which respondents were least concerned were more closely related to the individual, such as drinking alcohol, smoking, tooth decay, gum disease, underweight, overweight. Of greater concern were more such as water pollution, abortions among high school students, air pollution, accidents, medical malpractice.
For cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, various accidents, environmental pollution, parents showed high concern, however, for health issues which contributed as causative influences such as lung cancer from smoking and liver cirrhosis and traffic accidents from drinking alcohol showed less concern.
Relationship between parent's residential areas, educational level and sex distribution and health concern showed little difference, however, for these issues parents identified as relatively high concern. Most parents showed more concern in sex-related of family-related health issues such as abortions among high school students, suicide of parents and homicide of offspring. |