45 degrees

Analysis

 

This questionnaire has helped me understand how other teens with scoliosis felt when they were dealing with their condition. I came to an understanding that all of the participants in my questionnaire had the same concerns and issues when they were dealing with scoliosis.

In my questionnaire participated 45 people, majority of which were females. Age groups in my questionnaire varied, but nearly half of all responses were from the 16-18 year old group, with the second most common being 13-15 year olds. I managed to get a glimpse of the feedback from other age groups as well. Half of participants were at high school and 18% of all were in college, 16% had bachelor's degree. I tried to get responses from all over the world and the main countries that people were from were UK, USA and Australia. Most people that filled my questionnaire didn't know about scoliosis before they were diagnosed with it. However the other half knew about it from family/friend, doctor, education, internet or through word of mouth. The astonishing fact that I found out from this questionnaire was that a lot of respondents try to keep their scoliosis a secret and only told some of their classmates, close friends and family members. An interesting part of the results shows how many people the respondents know that have scoliosis as well. It was interesting for me to find this out, because I didn't know anyone myself until I started doing this research. After approaching my friends with the first questionnaire, I found out that I have quite a few friends that have scoliosis, which I didn't know about. Returning back to the question, on average they knew 4 people with scoliosis, but the biggest percentage was that they at least know one person, which I would expect to be from their family or a close friend. The majority of people were diagnosed at age 13, which is the most common in scoliosis, because then an abnormal curvature is more visible and the back gets checked prophylactically. However, there were 4 out of 45 that said they found out later then 19, which seems shocking, as there is not much to do as to have a surgery at that age.

 Speaking of treatment options, the majority applied the three main ones to their treatment: observation, physical therapy and back brace. Also 19 out of 45 people had to go through spinal fusion surgery and three people had to repeat the surgery. As additional treatment I proposed Crystal Therapy to see how many people would be interested in trying it, however 40% wouldn't have tried it and 42% maybe would have tried it. The first treatment option I wanted to find out about was if they had to wear a back brace and half of the participants wore a back brace and the other 44% did not. Only 15 out of  the 23 that wore the back brace provided with an answer for how long they wore it, majority wearing it for <1 year and two people wore it for the longest of 4 years. The next four questions I was interested in were about surgery. Out of all the respondents 42% had a surgery done, 18% are getting a surgery soon ad 9% of people were advised to have surgery, but didn't go through with it. On average surgery success rate was 4.37/5 stars and 13 people out of 45 found that they had to visit many different health establishments instead of having everything in one place.

In the next part of the questionnaire I wanted to find out what positive and negative emotions and feelings teenagers experience while going through scoliosis. I found out that there were more negative emotions and feelings at the time, but it was interesting to see what could be the positive outcome of this experience. The top 7 positive outcomes were: brave/strong, cared for, hopeful, loved, self-accepting, understanding, and motivated. On the other side the top 7 negative outcomes were: discomfort, insecurity, low self-esteem, fear, frustration, stress, and embarrassment.

Another area that I wanted to touch was how much moral support patients got from outside their family/friend circle. I think it was important to know if people thought it would have helped them to talk to an unbiased third party about what emotions they were going through, as we saw from the previous question there were a lot of mixed feelings. What I found out from this was that 82% of people did not receive any moral support from organisation or professional body. Then I asked to rate on a scale from 0 to 10, how much moral support they received outside their family/friend circle, the answers varied in a broad range, but 13% chose 0 and the average rate was 4.49/10. 

I wanted to bring some visual questions into this questionnaire to make it more interesting for the participants to fill in and spark their imagination. I asked them to choose a space that would lift their spirits and the environment setting that they liked the most was “healing gardens”, with “ramps instead of stair” coming in second. The last question was about how they felt about an adaptive re-use of the industrial building to make it a rehabilitation centre. There were mixed feelings about the idea and the average rating was 3.43 out of 5.

Overall this questionnaire really gave me a better understanding of what people with scoliosis are dealing with and it corresponds to my personal experience as I have felt the same way. I believe this was a very successful questionnaire and I have learnt a lot about the process of surgery and its time schedule, as well as the emotions and feelings teenagers go through at this difficult period.