Managing children's asthma: what role do caregivers' mental representations of trigger and symptom management behaviors play?

Objective: Pediatric asthma management is challenging for parents and guardians (hereafter ). We examined (1) how caregivers mentally represent trigger and symptom management strategies, and (2) how those mental representations are associated with actual management behavior.

Methods: In an online survey,  = 431 caregivers of children with asthma rated 20 trigger management behaviors and 20 symptom management behaviors across 15 characteristics, and indicated how often they engaged in each behavior.

Results: Principal components analysis indicated 4 dimensions for trigger management behaviors and 3 for symptom management behaviors. Bayesian mixed-effects models indicated that engagement in trigger management behavior was more likely for behaviors rated as . However, trigger management behavior did not depend on how highly the behavior was rated as , , or . Engagement in symptom management behavior was more likely for behaviors rated as and , but was unrelated to how highly a behavior was rated as .

Conclusion: These results suggest that interventions might be particularly useful if they focus on the affirming nature of asthma management behaviors. However, such interventions should acknowledge structural factors (e.g. poverty) that constrain caregivers' ability to act.