The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

Research Writing 191 treatment plans that will not only meet the child’s needs, but also be congruent with parents’ beliefs” (676). Stroh et al. also found that parents influenced treatment, yet in contrast, they found that preferences originated from the physician or from pamphlets rather than personal beliefs of the parents (398). Because of the natural bias of these pamphlets produced by pharmaceutical companies, parents who receive information about ADHD from these sources are often more friendly toward medicine (Stroh 398). Not only do these studies address the influence of parent preferences, but also the types of preferences that the parents have. All three research groups came to varying conclusions about the preferences of parents. According to Stroh et al., parents of children with ADHD view medication as more effective than behavior therapy, whereas parents who did not have a child with the disorder saw medication as negative (397). The study conducted by Waschbusch et al. came to a similar conclusion. The study concluded that a large majority, or about 70.5%, of parents were medicine avoidant, meaning that not giving their children medicine was a top priority for them (Waschbusch et al. 556). However, this result is not necessarily accurate. The participants were children who had never taken medicine and whose parents aimed to avoid treating their kids with medication in the future. The former two surveys made the participants choose one treatment method over the other, whereas Johnston et al. acknowledges that most parents prefer a combination of multiple treatments. These treatments could include trying various methods that have not definitively been proven to work, like altering the child’s diet or adding vitamins and minerals (675). Preferences vary from parent to parent, depending on personal beliefs along with information obtained from various methods. Stroh et al. and Johnston et al. came to differing conclusions on the level of knowledge that parents had about ADHD along with its treatments. One study came to the conclusion that parents are lacking adequate knowledge about their child’s disorder. Because they are inadequately informed, parents often readily accept information from their doctors, their child’s teacher, and even biased pharmaceutical pamphlets (Stroh 397-398). This lack of knowledge or presence of one sided knowledge can prevent parents from being open to varying treatments. Johnston et al. state that most parents involved in the study had a good general knowledge of ADHD and