The Effect of Gender, Age, and Nationality on the Personal Space Preferences in Children’s Hospitals among Iranian and German Children and Adolescents

BACKGROUND Patients in the therapeutic environment worry about their health and therapy; they are away from their usual social activities, and these entire put a great deal of stress on them, and delay their therapy by affecting their immune system and reducing their spiritual power. OBJECTIVES The present study seeks to investigate the effect of gender, age, and nationality of children on their personal space preferences during hospital stay in children's hospitals the dependent variable, i.e., personal space preference, was measured in hospital rooms with or without a barrier to separate children's beds. (Barriers could be curtains or walls). PATIENTS AND METHODS The research method was descriptive survey research, and the participants included 120 Iranian children staying at Tehran children's hospitals and 104 German children staying at Stuttgart's children hospitals, who were chosen through stratified random sampling.(in all wards except infectious wards) The data was gathered through self report questionnaires and analyzed conducting categorical methods of Logic Log Linear Analysis and Logistic Regression methods using the SPSS software. RESULTS The results show that Iranian children, contrary to German children, prefer a space without any barrier, and that girls prefer closed spaces more than boys. Regarding the age, it was revealed that children and adolescents have nearly similar preferences. Finally, remarkable differences were found among groups with regard to their desired kind of barrier. CONCLUSIONS Preferring a space without a barrier, which provides more chances for social interaction among individuals, shows that the majority of children prefer to have social interactions and contacts in the hospital that is in line with the results of similar studies. Last preference (separating the beds with curtains) was not generally favored by the respondents, which is in line with the results of similar studies in 2006.