Youth's Perspective of Responsibility: Exploration of a Construct for Measurement with Youth with Developmental...

There is a need to develop self-reports that measure youth's responsibility for major life tasks. We examined if the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory-Computer Adaptive Test's (PEDI-CAT) operationalization of responsibility is salient to youth with developmental disabilities (DD). The PEDI-CAT defines responsibility as, "the extent to which the young person…take[s] control over organizing and managing major life tasks."

During six focus groups (n = 43), youth generated examples of behaviors and actions that demonstrated responsibility. Data were coded as "responsibility" or "discrete skills" per PEDI-CAT definitions. We reviewed examples in both categories and compared and contrasted how youth described responsibility.

Youth's descriptions of responsibility aligned with the PEDI-CAT's responsibility construct 42.75% of the time. In these instances, youth perceived themselves as causal agents who had to make decisions and self-regulate to manage and organize major life tasks. Otherwise, youth described themselves as causal agents who adhered to rules, social norms, and expectations of others during the execution of discrete skills.

Youth perceive themselves as responsible, causal agents during both the coordination and management of major life tasks and during the execution of discrete skills. As this is not aligned with the PEDI-CAT's operationalization of responsibility, there is a need to further explore youth's perceptions of responsibility prior to developing a self-report.