APA Annotation

Babrow, A.S., Kasch, C.R., & Ford, L.A. (1998). The many meanings of uncertainty in

illness: Toward a systematic accounting. Health Communication, 10, 124.

The articles main points are to supply the reader with information pertaining to the uncertainty

that people feel when they fall ill with an illness that is long-term and has a profound effect on

the persons life. Talking about an illness usually helps when trying to console someone who is

sick, but at times words do not communicate as well other types of communication. The article

focuses on how different types of psychological models provide evidence for how people

develop uncertainty and the challenges that occur with having a terminal illness.

This article is a useful and reliable because it is written by Austin Babrow who is a

professor at the School of Communications at Ohio University. He specializes in teaching

research that focuses on communication, uncertainty, values, and mainly the social construction

of uncertainty. He focuses on the values, good and bad, that involve environmental and health

risks. Babrow has received multiple awards and recognition for his work which makes him

highly credible for writing multiple journals and in particular this one. This source supplies

information and evidence towards why people feel at lost when they get sick.

This source was helpful in the Rogerian letter because it provided a valid, credible,

resource to support my claims about how getting sick at a young age can create uncertainty and

confusion. This source helped to shape my ideas and provide evidence for the recipient of my

letter to feel at comfort knowing that there is credible evidence out there to support my stance on

talking about illness to children. I used this source in my research project to support the idea that

children have no capacity of knowing what is going on, so it is the parents job to push away that

uncertainty and help out the child. Overall, this source allowed me to pull good supportive
information from Babrow and paraphrase or directly quote him in order to help my letter to

Sarah be informative.

Eiser, C., Eiser, J.R., & Lang, J. (1989). Scripts in childrens reports of medical

events. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 4, 377384.

This journal study focuses on the research done on children and their responses to a hospital or

medical environment. The feelings they feel, the things they think about, or the experiences they

had good or bad. In particular, this journal gathered research from children on what happens

when they go to any type of doctor and their responses were pooled in into groups which

encountered their journey to the doctors, the cause for coming, the procedures done to them, and

their time leaving for home. The interviewers were given the responsibility to classify these

responses and devlop a better understanding what was going on with them.

This is a useful source because this journal wanted to get actual evidence on what

children thought and felt when they entered a hospital for themselves or another. The

interviewers really wanted to see it from their point of view in order to go about how a child

should deal with an illness. The information is reliable because Professor Christine Eiser focuses

her research on the psychological effects of illnesses and the quality of life issues for children

and families. The author of this journals main publications and journal articles concern the

effects of talking to children about an illness, or not talking to them about them. This article is

credible in its extensive research and countless studies on children and their psychological

thinking about illnesses.

This source was helpful for the letter because the research gathered evidence from

children of all age groups in order to collect hard data on how they psychologically register being

at a doctors office. The source allowed me to display this important information in my letter in
order for the recipient of the letter to see qualified, real studies and see how a child deals with

illnesses and the impact it has on them. The journal allowed me to shape my argument about

talking about illnesses in a much better way since this case study focuses on such young

children. I had to bring in a source that would bring comfort to the person I am writing a letter to

and this journal did just that.

Whaley, B.B. (1994). Food is to me as gas is to cars??: Using figurative language to

explain illness to children. Health Communication, 6, 193204.

This article, focuses on the importance of the use of metaphors when explaining illnesses to very

young children. The article admits that there has not been much research on the results of using

analogies or metaphors, but is being explored more in order to see if it can be contradicted. There

is evidence for using metaphors to explain illnesses but hasnt been followed up on afterwards,

which is what this article sets out to do.

This is a useful source because I want to show to my audience in the letter (Sarah) that

metaphors are useful when helping a child explain an illness that is very hard to understand. This

article sets out to contradict that idea but, at the same time the article found many instances about

how using metaphors has worked for children. It was the perfect reference to use in my

reasoning about illnesses and communication with children. Overall, this is a credible source

because Bryan Whaley is the professor at the University of San Francisco who teaches his

courses on messages in health interaction, communication, social cognitive factors related to

illness, and the explanation of messages in health. This article reflects his level of expertise and

is fairly updated, making it a respectable source to use.

This source was helpful for the letter because it argued for the person I wrote the letter to

and encouraged their way of thinking, while supporting it with research. Yet, at the same time the
article had to mention the pros of using metaphors and all the research that supports it, allowing

me to use that to confirm my letter recipients thoughts, but add to her thinking instead of

shooting her opinion down. This is the perfect article to use for my case study and really helped

to make the letter more Rogerian because of it.