title: [Knowledge, attitudes and asthma quality of life of adolescents in schools. The need to educate our teaching centres].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Knowledge and attitudes toward asthma can condition the integration of adolescents with asthma in school and affect their quality of life. Our objective was to determine the state of knowledge, attitudes on asthma in secondary schools, and its relationship to quality of life of pupils with asthma, as an early step to an educational intervention.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive and cross-sectional study of pupils aged 13 and 14 years old and their teachers in 26 schools of Seville and province. We used, as study tools, the Newcastle Asthma Knowledge Questionnaire, the Gibson attitudes towards asthma, and the Paediatric Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire. To assess the normality of variables, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used, and for non-parametric variables the U Mann-Whitney and W Wilcoxon tests were used. For the association between variables, we use the regression coefficients and rho Spearman.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We studied 3827 pupils (279 with asthma) and 548 teachers. All had little knowledge about asthma. The quality of life in asthma was mild to moderately affected, and lower in girls, 5.38±1.08 (95% CI=5.20 to 5.55) than in boys 5.77 (± 1.18) (95% CI=5.56 to 5.97), P=.0000. We found no relationship between knowledge, attitudes and quality of life in asthma.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found a low level of knowledge about asthma in pupils and teacher. Asthma sufferers have a mild to moderate asthma quality of life, which is worse for girls. Knowledge has no relationship with attitudes to asthma in all groups, or with the quality of life of asthma sufferers.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Salud La Candelaria, Sevilla, Servicio Andaluz de Salud, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, España. mpraena@us.es
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Praena Crespo
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Fernández Truan
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Aquino Llinares
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Murillo Fuentes
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sánchez Sánchez
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gálvez González
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Castro Gómez
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Cenizo Benjumea
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001249:Asthma / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D011788:Quality of Life; D012424:Rural Population; D012574:Schools; D012737:Sex Factors; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014505:Urban Population