Identifying child functioning from an ICF-CY perspective: Everyday life situations explored in measures of participation

Abstract

Purpose. This study was part of a larger work to develop an authentic measure consisting of code sets for self- or proxy-report of child participation. The aim was to identify common everyday life situations of children and youth based on measures of participation.

Method. The study was descriptive in nature and involved several stages: systematic search of literature to find articles presenting measures for children and youth with disabilities, identifying measures in selected articles, linking items in included measures to the ICF-CY, analysing content in measures presented as performance and participation and identifying aggregations of ICF-CY codes across these measures.

Results. A large number of measures for children and youth with disabilities were identified but only 12 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. A slight distinction in content and age appropriateness appeared. Measures presented as performance covered all the ICF-CY Activities and Participation chapters, whereas measures presented as participation covered five of nine chapters. Three common everyday life situations emerged from the measures: Moving around, Engagement in play and Recreation and leisure.

Conclusion. Only a small number of life situations for children and youth emerged from items in selected measures, thus, other sources are needed to identify more everyday life situations.

Keywords:

• Adolescent
• child
• classification
• ICF-CY
• participation

Declaration of interest: This research has been supported by FAS (Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, dnr 2006–0579) and is contributed to the MURINET project (Multidisciplinary Research Network on Health and Disability in Europe, VI European Framework Programme, 2007–2010).