An exploration of the relationship between two measures of children’s participation

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between the Children Participation Questionnaire and the Children’s Assessment of Participation with Hands.

Materials and methods: Two researchers classified the item contents independently using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Child and Youth version as a guide. Parents of 51 children with intellectual and developmental disabilities completed both measures within one month.

Results: The linking results indicated that the two participation measures covered a broad range of life domains, which corresponded well to the conceptually matched Activities and Participation categories/chapters of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Child and Youth version. A significant moderate link (Spearman’s ρ coefficient = 0.68, p < 0.01) between the two measures was found, and all of their matched domains (except for the educational domain) also revealed small to moderate associations (ρ = 0.47–0.71, p < 0.01). The paired items that asked identical or similar life situations between the two measures demonstrated varying correlation levels.

Conclusion: This study provides evidence for the content and construct validity of the two children’s participation measures. The findings also offer important insights about the similarities and differences between the two measures. This knowledge will assist clinicians in selecting outcome measures.

Implications for rehabilitation

• The Children Participation Questionnaire and Children’s Assessment of Participation with Hands demonstrate good content and convergent validity.

• The two measures capture distinctive aspects and/or degrees of children’s participation.

• Clinicians and researchers need to be aware of the similarities and differences between the two measures before selecting outcome measure.

Keywords:

• Participation
• children
• ICF-CY linking rules
• intellectual and developmental disability
• children participation questionnaire
• children’s assessment of participation with hands

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the permission granted by Dr. Rosenberg for this study to use the CPQ. We also acknowledge Ms Kelly Skorka for her involvement as one of the raters in the linking process and Ms Macey Cho for her editing assistance in the manuscript. The support from the Department of Education, Training and Employment, Queensland Government as well as the schools and families participating in this research are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

The authors are also the developers of the CAPH questionnaire used in this study. The CAPH questionnaire can be obtained by contacting Dr. Chien or visiting the website (childrenhandskills.com). Apart from these, the authors have no conflicts of interest for this study.

Additional information

Funding

The first author was financially supported by The University of Queensland (Postdoctoral Research Fellowship) to complete this study and by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Start-up Fund with funding number: 1-ZE4E) when writing the paper.