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Lay and Professional Constructions of Time: Implications for Illness Behaviour and Management of a Chronic Condition

King's College London, myfanwy.morgan{at}kcl.ac.uk

Michelle Thomas

King's College London, michelle.thomas{at}kcl.ac.uk

Time permeates all aspects of our everyday lives but its very centrality often renders it invisible. This article examines how temporal understandings and priorities shape and inform lay and professional constructions of illness, understandings of symptoms and help-seeking behaviour, based on semi-structured interviews with 20 GPs and 16 parents of children with asthma. This identifies the significance of a temporal perspective for beliefs about the nature of asthma as episodic or linear, the appropriate sequences and timing of symptoms and treatment, patterns of help-seeking, and perceptions of speed and treatment choices. Comparing GPs' and parents' accounts highlights both the concordance and divergences in temporal perspectives.We argue that understanding the complexity of illness behaviours requires engagement with the ways in which temporal understandings shape and inform behaviours throughout the illness trajectory and may vary among different social and cultural groups.

Key Words: asthma • chronic illness • illness behaviour • qualitative • time

Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 3, 555-572 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0038038509103210


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