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Updated: Sep 26, 2025

Author Spotlight: Self-Assessment Protocol for Predicting Psoriatic Arthritis in Psoriasis Patients
Published on: March 1, 2024
Development and validation of the Kids Disability Screen for children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: results
Kristin Houghton1, Meghan McPherson1, Nikola Surjanovic2
1British Columbia Children's Hospital and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to develop and validate a brief disability screen for children with JIA, the Kids Disability Screen (KDS).
Methods:
A total of 216 children enrolled in the Canadian Alliance of Pediatric Rheumatology Investigators (CAPRI) Registry in 2017-2018 formed a development cohort, and 220 children enrolled in 2019-2020 formed a validation cohort. At every clinic visit, parents answered two questions derived from the Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ): 'Is it hard for your child to run and play BECAUSE OF ARTHRITIS?' ('Hard' 0-10), and 'Does your child usually need help from you or another person BECAUSE OF ARTHRITIS?' ('Help', 0-10). We used 36-fold cross-validation and tested nine different mathematical methods to combine the answers and optimize psychometric properties. The results were confirmed in the validation cohort.
Results:
Expressed as the mean of the two answers, KDS best balanced ease of use and psychometric properties, while a LASSO regression model combining the two answers with other patient characteristics [estimated CHAQ [eCHAQ]) had the highest responsiveness. In the validation cohort, 22.7%, 25.9% and 28.6% of patients had a score of 0 at enrolment for the KDS, eCHAQ and CHAQ, respectively. Responsiveness was 0.67, 0.74 and 0.62, respectively. Sensitivity to detect a CHAQ > 0 was 0.90 and specificity 0.56, KDS detecting some disability in 44% of children with a CHAQ = 0.
Conclusion:
This simple KDS has psychometric properties comparable with those of a full CHAQ and may be used at every clinic visit to identify those children who need a full disability assessment.
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