Nowadays, quality of life is one of the important aspect in programming and giving service to disabled
and blindness is one of the most important and common kinds of physical handicaps. This study aimed to: determine
Self-esteem & quality of life among visual impaired children in Assiut City. Descriptive cross sectional research
design was used in this study. The studied children were 100 children from El-Noor School, Assiut City, 22 children
from last two years of primary school, 44 children from preparatory school, 34 children from secondary school with
age ranged from 12 to 18 years and both sex. This study is divided to four tools; the first tool was structured
interview sheet included biosocial data of children, time and causes of disability, second tool to assess social class
by using Abd-El-Twab scale 1998. The third tool - Self-esteem scale, it includes 10 items. , the final tool to assess
quality of life data, it consists of 68 items. Following approval for the research, personal meetings were held with
each child in school sitting. Data was collected during the period from first of September 2009 to the end of April
2010. Obtained results revealed that more than two-thirds of studied children aged between 12-18 years. The mean
age of studied children is 15.87 ± 3.03 and more than half of them were males. Nearly three quarters of studied
sample had low social class (72%). In addition; nearly half of children with high total quality of life score were
come from high social class compared with 8.3% from low social class children with highly statistically significant
difference. Also, it was found that 40% of studied children with high total quality of life scores were outdoor school
residence compared to only 8.2% of indoor school residence (p value 0.003). Further, more than half of studied
children with low social class had low self-esteem compared to more than three quarters of normal self esteem
children were come from high social class. 71.4% of normal self-esteem children were present in small family
compared by two third of low self-esteem score were present in large family. It is concluded that children from high
social class had higher quality of life and normal self esteem than other children. It is recommended that
multicomponant intervention with a focus on the children and their families are needed to improve self esteem and
quality of life of visually impaired children. Designing and implementing of a psychological counseling program for
visually impaired children to improve their emotional statues and help them to coping effectively.
[Safaa A. M. . Kotb; Marzoka A. Gadallah and Salwa A. Marzouk. Self-esteem and quality of life among visually
impaired children in Assiut City, Egypt. Journal of American Science 2011;7(8):47-57].(ISSN: 1545-1003).