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Development of items designed to evaluate activity performance and participation in children and adolescents with
Christina L Calhoun1, Stephen M Haley, Anne Riley
1Shriners Hospitals for Children-Philadelphia, 3551 North Broad Street, PA 19140, USA.
Insights
Developing new assessment tools is crucial for tracking outcomes in pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI). This study details the creation of item pools to measure activity performance and participation in children with SCI.
Area of Science:
- Rehabilitation Medicine
- Pediatric Neurology
- Outcome Measurement
Background:
- Collecting outcomes-based data in pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI) is challenging due to a lack of suitable assessment tools.
- Existing measures are often not tailored to the unique needs of children and adolescents with SCI.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the development process for two item pools evaluating activity performance and participation in pediatric SCI.
- To introduce the specific items created for this population.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a rigorous item development process including construct definition, literature review, chart review, and iterative refinement through focus groups and cognitive interviews.
- Developed item pools for both activity performance (347 items) and participation (61 items).
Main Results:
- Generated comprehensive item pools for activity performance and participation tailored to pediatric SCI.
- Items address key areas such as wheeled mobility, adaptive equipment use, role performance, and socialization.
- Items were developed for both child and parent respondents.
Conclusions:
- The detailed item development process is a foundational step toward creating a validated outcomes instrument for pediatric SCI.
- The generated items are specific to the pediatric SCI population, addressing unique functional and social aspects.
- Further calibration studies are planned to assess the potential for computer-adaptive testing applications.
Abstract:
Background/Objective. Outcomes-based data, whether used clinically or for research, are difficult to collect in the pediatric spinal cord injury (SCI) population due to a lack of appropriate assessment measures. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to describe the process by which two item pools were developed to evaluate activity performance and participation among children with SCI and to introduce the resultant items specific to pediatric SCI. Methods. The process of item development, including construct development, review of related assessment tools, chart review, item writing and refinement using focus groups, cognitive interviews, and further refinement, was used to create the items pools for activity and participation for children and adolescents with SCI. Results. A total of 347 items were written for the activity performance construct and 61 items were written for the participation construct. Several domains were established within each construct and items were written for both child and parent respondents. Conclusion. The process of detailed item development is the first step in the process of developing an outcomes instrument for children and adolescents with SCI to assess activity performance and participation. The items are representative of pediatric SCI because they address areas specific to children and adolescents with SCI such as wheeled mobility, upper extremity function with adaptive equipment, role performance, and socialization. After testing these items in calibration studies, we will determine if these items can be developed into effective computer-adaptive testing applications.
