The communicative participation in pre-school children estimated by the FOCUS questionnaire: a functional communicative outcome measure

Abstract

Purpose

Participation-outcome measures are required in the phoniatric and speech-language pathology practice to evaluate real-life changes during interventions. In line with the bio-psycho-social model of health, ‘Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six’ (FOCUS) is a validated scale by which parents rate their child’s Communicative Participation (CP). CP has been widely investigated in atypically-developing population, and it may be an innovative construct also for typically-developing children (TDC). The aim of the study is to describe the CP and its components observed in a large group of TDC, exploring whether children’s CP is influenced by their age.

Method

Through a cross-sectional observational study, parents of 355 Italian-speaking TDC aged 3.0–5.11 years without developmental impairments completed the Italian FOCUS (FOCUS-I).

Result

CP significantly increased with age (p < .001). Components’ scores differed by age, with some competences (‘pragmatics’, ‘receptive language/attention’, ‘social competence/play’, ‘coping strategies/emotions’) increased with age less than others (‘speech’, ‘intelligibility’, ‘independence’, ‘expressive language’).

Conclusion

The study suggests that a spontaneous significant increase in CP should be expected with a child’s development and it discusses the differences in the profile scores. When exploring real-life communicative participation, parents rate their children as changing mostly in their speech and expressive-linguistic competences.

Keywords:

• Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six
• functional outcome
• parent-report
• communicative participation
• ICF-CY

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the families, children and preschool teachers who participated in this project. They extend special acknowledgement to graduate students (Selene Bertovani, Selene Fassina, Sara Grassi, Benedetta Ticcozzelli, Giulia Visconti) for support in data collection.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant financial disclosures. Two of the authors (Schindler A., Piazzalunga S.) were the authorized translators of the FOCUS-I. However, the authors do not have any financial or personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence the content and writing of the manuscript. Therefore, the authors declare that no competing interests exist.