Children ages 6-18 and their parents are administered semi-structured interviews and respond to standardized questionnaires. Interviews include: (1) Piagetian cognitive-developmental interview; and (2) a semi-structured interview assessing physical and psychological concepts, including causality, symptom recognition, treatment and prevention. Questionnaires assess general locus of control, health-related locus of control, children's behavior when ill, religiosity and acculturation.

Data collection is ongoing; to date we have approximately 200 families in our database. Children are recruited through the San Diego Unified School District.

Our present activities are focused on data collection, data processing, and development of conference presentations.

Doctoral and master's students have been involved in several spin-off projects. T. Stephanie Oprendek, Ph.D., collected data on college students' concepts of physical illness and psychological problems. Ingunn Hansdottir, M.A., assessed Icelandic children's concepts of physical illness. Michelle Adkins, M. A., surveyed physical and mental health professionals about their knowledge of children's understanding of physical and mental illness.