Development of the parent response to child illness (PRCI) scale

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Psychology
• Childhood Illness Management
• Parental Adaptation

Background:

• Parental perception and response are crucial following a child's diagnosis of a chronic condition.
• Existing instruments may not adequately capture the multifaceted parental experience with new-onset childhood illnesses like seizures and asthma.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel instrument measuring parental responses to childhood seizures or asthma.
• To assess the reliability and validity of this new measurement tool.

Main Methods:

• Development of a 35-item scale with five subscales: Child Support, Family Life/Leisure, Condition Management, Child Autonomy, and Child Discipline.
• Data collection from parents of 224 children with new-onset seizures and 104 with new-onset asthma.
• Analysis of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity through mood associations.

Main Results:

• The scale demonstrated acceptable to good internal consistency for most subscales (Child Support, Family Life/Leisure, Condition Management).
• Test-retest reliability was found to be good to fair across both parent samples.
• Positive associations between parent mood and scale subscales provided empirical support for validity.

Conclusions:

• The developed scale is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing parental responses to childhood seizures and asthma.
• The instrument holds potential for application in both clinical settings and research.
• The scale may be adaptable for use with parents of children experiencing other chronic health conditions.