Abstract
Purpose: :
To compare parent responses from a survey assessing behaviors related to schoolwork in children who have: convergence insufficiency (CI) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), CI only, and normal binocular vision (NBV).
Methods: :
The Academic Behavior Survey (ABS) is a 6-item survey that evaluates parents’ perceptions of certain behaviors their child may exhibit when reading or performing school-work and parental concern about school performance. Each item is scored from 0 (Never) to 4 (Always) with a total score ranging from 0 to 24. The survey was administered to the parents of 221 children 9-17 years old (mean age 11.8 yrs.) with symptomatic CI prior to enrolling into the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial and to 49 children with NBV (mean age 12.5 years) as an ancillary study. The parents also reported whether the child had ADHD. A two-sample t-test was used to compare group means and a chi-squared statistic was used to compare the distributions of responses for each of the 6 items between groups.
Results: :
Fifteen percent of the CI group and 6% of the NBV group were ADHD by parental report. A two-sample t-test showed that the total ABS score for the CI with ADHD group (16.88) was significantly higher than the CI only group (12.25) (p<0.001). Both CI groups scored significantly higher than the NBV group mean score (6.47) (p<.001). The distribution of responses for each survey item was significantly different between CI with ADHD (n=34) and CI only (n=187) groups for all questions except worry about school performance (p-values < 0.03). Both the CI with ADHD and CI only groups distribution of responses for each survey item were significantly different than the NBV group (p-values < 0.001).
Conclusions: :
By parental report, the prevalence of ADHD was higher in the CI group compared to the NBV group. However, both CI with ADHD and CI only groups scored significantly higher on the ABS than the NBV group. In addition, parents of children with CI reportedly "worry" more about their children’s school performance when compared to parents of NBV children.
Clinical Trial: :
www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT00338611
Keywords: strabismus: diagnosis and detection • binocular vision/stereopsis • reading