Parental Numeracy Skills and Pediatric Asthma Outcomes in Jordan: A Cross-Sectional Study of Asthma-Related Quality of Life

Objective: Parental numeracy skills, reflecting a quantitative domain within health literacy, may be relevant to pediatric asthma management. However, the association between parental numeracy skills and the asthma-related quality of life (QOL) of children with asthma remains insufficiently examined. This study aimed to assess the QOL of Jordanian children with asthma and to examine its association with parental numeracy skills.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on a sample of 400 parents (66.5% mothers) of children with asthma (59.5% male) undergoing treatment at the University of Jordan Hospital. The Arabic version of the Asthma Numeracy Questionnaire (Ar-ANQ) was utilized to evaluate parental numeracy skills, while the parent-report version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) Asthma Module was employed to assess QOL. Quantile regression analyzed associations between parental numeracy skills, asthma control, and QOL.Results: The median Ar-ANQ score was 3 (IQR: 1–4) out of 4, and the median QOL score was 60 (IQR: 50–67) out of 100. Higher parental numeracy skills were significantly associated with better asthma-related QOL among children (β = 1.99, 95% CI [0.81, 3.18], p = 0.001). Children with uncontrolled or partially controlled asthma had significantly lower QOL scores (β = -9.70, 95% CI [-15.57, -3.82], p = 0.001; β = -10.06, 95% CI [-15.83, -4.29], p = 0.001).Conclusion: Higher parental numeracy skills were associated with better asthma-related QOL among children with asthma. Given the cross-sectional design, this finding should be interpreted as an association rather than evidence of a causal effect.