 Causal reasoning and the treatment of diarrhoeal disease by mothers in KenyaVimla L. Patel, Thomas O. Eisemon and JoséF. Arocha Social Science & Medicine, 1988, vol. 27, issue 11, 1277-1286 Abstract: A study of reasoning about the cause and treatment of childhood diarrhoea by Maasai schooled and unschooled mothers was carried out in Kenya, using a method of analysis developed within cognitive psychology. A dramatic difference in the conceptual structures of mother's reasoning about both the cause and treatment of diarrhoea was found between the unschooled and schooled group. The unschooled mother's explanation of diarrhoea was in terms of illness, resulting from social and moral factors. The knowledge structures generated showed global coherence. The schooled mothers explained diarrhoea with a series of quasi-biomedical facts about the disease with little or no connections between facts. The role of understanding the underlying disease processes for learning in health education is discussed in the context of Kenyan culture. Keywords: causal; reasoning; childhood; diarrhoea; cognitive; analysis; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:27:y:1988:i:11:p:1277-1286 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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