Parents of school-age children with asthma face prolonged caregiving burdens and multiple challenges. Understanding their social support networks and family resilience is essential for developing effective interventions, yet systematic investigations integrating both constructs in this specific population remain scarce. This study aimed to investigate the current status of social support network and family resilience among parents of school-age children with asthma, identify independent influencing factors, and provide evidence for clinical intervention strategies. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 306 parents of school-age children (6–12 years) with asthma at a tertiary grade A children’s hospital from June 2025 to March 2026. A self-developed, pilot-tested questionnaire, grounded in Walsh’s family resilience framework and the stress buffering model of social support, was used to collect general information, family resilience (6 items), social support network (8 items), and disease coping and caregiving behaviors (6 items). The questionnaire demonstrated satisfactory content validity (S-CVI = 0.92), construct validity (three factors explaining 68.42% of variance), and reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.894). The total score ranged from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better support and resilience. Univariate analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression were performed to identify influencing factors. Clinical trial number: not applicable. The effective response rate was 87.4% (306/350). The mean total score of social support network and family resilience was 58.90 ± 6.44, with 52.3% of participants scoring below 60 (the theoretical midpoint), indicating a moderately low overall level. The regression model explained 49.9% of the variance (adjusted R²=0.499). Among the three dimensions, social support network scored the lowest (mean item score 2.93 ± 0.52), whereas disease coping and caregiving behaviors scored the highest (3.04 ± 0.59). Parental age (β = 0.247), education level (β = 0.292), monthly household income per capita (β = 0.318), asthma duration (β = 0.219), and number of acute exacerbations in the past year (β=−0.269) were independent influencing factors (all P < 0.001). Child’s age, parental role, and child’s sex showed no significant associations. The level of social support network and family resilience among parents of school-age children with asthma is moderately low, with notable deficiencies in external support utilization and intra-family communication. Household economic status exerts the strongest influence. Based on these findings, targeted strategies are proposed, including stratified empowerment education, family resilience workshops, hospital-school linkage mechanisms, and policy support to reduce financial burdens. Future prospective multicenter studies integrating objective clinical indicators and parental mental health variables are needed to validate associations and causal pathways.
Chen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.