Questionnaires

The basic information of children with burns and their parents, Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90), Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), Social Support Rate Scale (SSRS), and Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ) were completed and obtained from the participants.

The details of the gender, age, nationality, relationship with the child, religion, marital status, occupation, professional qualifications, and monthly income of the parents were obtained using a questionnaire completed by the parents.

The details of the gender, age, school level, number of pediatric hospital visits because of trauma in the past year, and number of children in family of children with burns were obtained using another questionnaire filled by the parents. Other details of time between the incidence of burns and hospital visit and the degree of burns were completed by a nurse.

SCL-90, compiled by American psychologist Derogatis et al. in 1973²¹, is used to test whether parents may have a mental disorder and its severity. It was translated into Chinese by Wang in the 1980s²². The scale includes 90 items with a total of 10 subscales, namely somatization, obsessive–compulsive symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism, and other additional items. The total average score of SCL-90 is also the total symptom index. Increase in the total average score indicates more obvious symptoms. The calculation method is to divide the total score by 90. The present study used the Chinese version of SCL-90, which has been cited in China for > 30 years and has good reliability and validity. Cronbach’s α coefficient of the total scale is 0.97, Cronbach’s α coefficient of each subscale is > 0.69, and the test–retest reliability is > 0.7^23,24.

To understand parental personality factors, EPQ, which was developed by Chen et al.^25–27, was used. China revised this scale in the 1980s to make the Chinese version of EPQ more suitable for Chinese people; this version was adopted in this study. The scale has 88 items and contains three dimensions, including the four subscales of extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), psychoticism (P), and lie (L), with good reliability and validity^25,26,28.

To understand the characteristics of parents’ social support and its relationship with mental health level, mental illness, and various physical diseases, SSRS, developed by Xiao et al.^29,30, was used. The scale has a total of 10 items, including three dimensions of objective support (three items), subjective support (four items), and use of social support (three items). The authors of this scale, Xiao et al., evaluated SSRS, and the results revealed that the total score reliability is 0.92 and the reliability of each item is between 0.89 and 0.94, indicating that the questionnaire has good test–retest reliability³⁰.

To understand the relationship between parental coping styles and psychosomatic health, SCSQ was used³¹. The scale comprises two subscales with 20 items: positive coping style (12 items) and negative coping style (8 items). Items were measured on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = never, 1 = occasionally, 2 = sometimes, and 3 = frequently)³². This scale has good reliability and validity: Cronbach’s α coefficient of the scale is 0.90, Cronbach’s α coefficient of the positive coping scale is 0.89, Cronbach’s α coefficient of the negative coping scale is 0.78, and the test–retest correlation coefficient is 0.89³¹.