Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Knowledge about end-user perceptions is important to ensure educational resources have maximal impact.

Objective: To understand school children’s perceptions and ideas about three endocrine topics.

Methods: This activity was done as part of Society for Endocrinology public engagement grant. Years 5 and 6 school children (aged 10-11 years) from Nonsuch Primary School in Birmingham were invited to create posters on three themes—diabetes and obesity, technology’s use in health monitoring and supporting emotional wellbeing within the school environment. Following an 8-minute talk on each of the themes, students were given 20 minutes to create a poster. 56 students participated in groups of four. Six groups produced posters on emotional wellbeing, four on childhood obesity/diabetes and four on technology in healthcare. No additional preparation was involved, which meant the resulting work was a spontaneous assembly of thoughts. Posters were analysed using NVivo 12 software, utilising a thematic inductive qualitative method. The posters were initially coded by an independent study member and then reviewed by another study member to identify common themes.

Results: The most common themes in diabetes posters were exercise (approx. 2/3 of content) and diet (1/3rd). In emotional wellbeing posters, common themes were body changes associated with puberty and communicating feelings with a variety of different support networks such as friends, families and teachers. The common themes in technology posters were the use of heart rate and breathing rate monitoring using small personal portable devices such as watches and mobile phones, which allow for self-monitoring.

Conclusion: School children tended to focus on physical activity and open communication when they created obesity and wellbeing posters. Additionally, they focussed on familiar technologies and self-monitoring for technology posters. Further studies are needed to study the impact of resources based on children’s interests or addressing gaps in knowledge.