Thesis Defense Announcement

The College of Arts and Sciences announces the final Thesis of

Kimberly Klages

for the degree of Master of Science

August 1, 2016 at 10:00 am in 379, Psychology Building

Major Advisor: Kristoffer Berlin, PhD

Empirically Derived Patterns of Pain, Stooling, and Incontinence and their Relations to Health Related Quality of Life among Youth with Chronic Constipation

ABSTRACT: Chronic constipation is associated with pain, stress, and fecal incontinence, which negatively impact HRQoL. It is currently unclear if patterns of pain, stool frequency, and incontinence are differentially associated with HRQoL in youth with chronic constipation. Stooling patterns were derived using Latent Variable Mixture Modeling and a three-class model emerged: withholding/avoiding, pain, and fecal incontinence (FI). The pain class reported the greatest amount of disease burden, functional disability, psychosocial problems, and, along with the FI class, elevated levels of family conflict. The FI class reported the greatest amount of parental worry of social impact.