The Parent Report Form of the CHIP-Child Edition: reliability and validity

Valid, comprehensive instruments to describe, monitor, and evaluate health from childhood through adolescence are almost nonexistent, but are critical for health resource planning, evaluation of policy, preventive, and clinical interventions, and understanding trajectories of health during this important period of life.

The objectives of this study were to describe the development, testing, and final versions of the Parent Report Form of the Child Health and Illness Profile-Child Edition (CHIP-CE/PRF), designed to measure the health of children 6 to 11 years old from the caregiver perspective.

Parents (N=1049) completed a version of the CHIP-CE/PRF in 4 locations in the United States, either in clinic waiting rooms or their homes. They differed in race/ethnicity, socioeconomic level, and native language.

The Parent CHIP-CE is feasible; parents with a 5th-grade reading level complete the 76-item PRF in 20 minutes. Its domains (Satisfaction, Comfort, Risk Avoidance, Resilience, and Achievement) measure structurally distinct, interrelated aspects of health. Domain reliability is high: internal consistency=0.79-0.88; retest reliability (ICC)=0.71-0.85. Validity is supported. The scale scores are sensitive to predicted age, gender, and socioeconomic status differences in health.

The CHIP-Child Edition/Parent Report Form is a psychometrically sound, conceptually based measure of child health that works well in diverse populations. It produces scores that parallel those of children on the CHIP-CE/CRF and adolescents on the CHIP-AE and allows health to be consistently assessed from childhood through adolescence. It should meet many needs for describing, monitoring, and understanding child health and evaluating outcomes of interventions.