Healthy children's identification and risk perception of medicines in England.

BACKGROUND: Children's understanding of medicines has an impact on their behavior toward those medicines, and yet there has been a paucity of studies exploring this area. OBJECTIVES: To assess children's ability to identify and to explore their risk perceptions of medicines. METHODS: One hundred eighty-two children aged 4 to 11 years at 2 primary schools in England completed a worksheet containing photos of foods and pharmaceutical products. Children were asked to identify what the picture showed and classify it as "good for them," "bad for them," or "sometimes good/sometimes bad for them." Responses were marked as correct if they identified an item without the need for exact identification. Where an item was correctly identified, risk perception was analyzed. RESULTS: Children correctly identified 5 of the 7 pictures as a form of medicine (mean=5.10, standard deviation=1.51), and identification was positively correlated with age (ρ=0.59, P Language: en