Elif Isik
Texas Woman's University, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Teenagers with asthma often wait until symptoms flare before acting. This reactive style can lead to attacks and higher healthcare costs.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
- Topics
asthma
self-management
cognitive autonomy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Write questionnaire items on adolescent asthma self-management using an asthma self-management behavior framework and a seven-step development guide. Teens with asthma will help write the items alongside the team's prior qualitative and review findings.
- Establish face and content validity by having eight experts rate each item's clarity and relevance. Then hold cognitive interviews with ten adolescents to confirm they understand the items as intended.
- Test the questionnaire's structure with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The data will come from 300 adolescents aged 12–21, recruited from schools, clinics and national asthma organizations.
- Assess construct validity by relating questionnaire scores to quality of life and self-efficacy. Measure reliability through internal consistency and test-retest analysis.
More about the research
Adolescence is also when young people develop the thinking skills and independence (cognitive autonomy) to take charge of their own care. Self-management is key to keeping asthma under control. It covers daily habits like taking medicines, noticing symptoms and avoiding triggers. A recent systematic review found that existing questionnaires on how teens manage their asthma are narrow and poorly validated, and none capture the thinking and self-regulation behind those habits.
Why it matters
Adolescents with asthma have high rates of illness from the disease, and many manage it only after symptoms worsen. A validated questionnaire built for ages 12–21 could let clinicians in multidisciplinary settings assess teens' self-management and give targeted feedback. It also gives researchers a more accurate tool for studying how young people learn to care for their asthma.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jean-Marie Bruzzese
Columbia University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test in a randomized trial of 370 New York City high school students whether CAMP Air, a seven-module web-based asthma program, improves Asthma Control Test scores and reduces urgent care visits over one year compared with asthma education.
Celia Karp
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Develop gender-specific versions of the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy (DAP) scale with construct validity in Uganda, translating items into local languages for use with women and men.
Peng Wang
Yale University, CT·Psychology
Generate an initial pool of items measuring daily intersectional stigma, drawing on prior research and semi-structured interviews with 20 Black people with disabilities and 10 content experts.
The school
Texas Woman's University: 3 labs on PI Pages, $9M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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