Perceived importance of wearing glasses and frequency of use among school-aged children

Background and Purpose: Compliance with wearing prescribed eyeglasses among school-aged children has been reported to be poor. The purpose of this study was to assess the relation between perceived importance of eyeglass wear and self-reported frequency of use of eyeglasses, among 6th thru 11th grade students.

Methods: Subjects were 6 thru 11th grade students (53% female) enrolled in a longitudinal study on refractive error. The majority of subjects were members of a Native American tribe with a high prevalence of astigmatism. Subjects received an eye examination during the 2010-2011 academic year and two pairs of eyeglasses. The following year, subjects were re-examined and asked to complete a compliance survey with four Likert-scale items on frequency and perceived importance of spectacle use. Descriptive statistics and chi square were used to analyze the data.

Results: Of the 175 students who completed the survey 76 (43%) felt that it was extremely important to wear their glasses and 80 (46%) reported their glasses were lost or broken. A smaller percentage (42%) of students who reported their glasses were extremely or very important reported that their glasses were lost or broken compared to students who reported that their glasses were not at all important, not very important or somewhat important (64%) (p=0.031).

Conclusion: Although students appear to understand the need for wearing glasses, newer strategies for compliance are necessary to ensure that they know how to care for their glasses and how frequency of use needed.