822
Views
4
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
EBP Advancement Corner

Development of a quality of life measure for children and young people with speech, language, and communication needs

, &
Pages 216-225 | Published online: 17 May 2012
 

Abstract

Children's speech and language difficulties affect more than their communication skills, impacting on their experience at school, relationships, and later employment opportunities. These wider sequelae, arguably, contribute to a child's quality of life (QoL), which is routinely measured in the care and research of other childhood conditions, but no measures exist for children's communication needs. Using a psychometric approach, a new QoL measure for children with speech, language, and communication needs was developed. Pretesting produced a clinically acceptable measure, which was then completed by 303 children and young people with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCNs) in a field test. This field test provided a psychometric basis for the reduction of items in the measure into statistically coherent subscales. The “Paediatric Speech and Language QoL” Scale (Ped SaL QoL) appears to be an acceptable, reliable, and valid measure of condition specific QoL for children with SLCNs. It would seem to have potential for use in both clinical practice and investigations of treatments in speech and language therapy. Further testing in larger, more representative samples of children with SLCNs is needed to further establish its reliability and validity and its potential for use as an outcome measure in clinical trials.

Source of funding: The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Grant RDA 01/05. The research was conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki and received a favorable opinion from a National Health Service Research Committee (Rec. No. Q1701/47).

Acknowledgments

Declaration of interest. The authors report no conflicts of interest, and they alone are responsible for the content of this article.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 255.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.