title: Testing and validating a simplified scale to measure social participation of people with disabilities in Indonesia.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The Participation Scale is an 18-item interview-based scale that measures social participation. In Indonesia, problems were reported with conducting the Participation Scale interview. To address these, a simplified version of the Participation Scale was developed and tested in Jakarta and Makassar, Indonesia.
  
  
  METHODS
  People with different kinds of disability were interviewed with the original Participation Scale and the simplified version and we also asked their opinion about the scale. Fifty people without disabilities were included to establish the "normal" score for social participation. The following psychometric properties were calculated: internal consistency, criterion validity, floor and ceiling effects and interpretability. Internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach's alpha (>0.70). Criterion validity was calculated for the continuous participation scores using Spearman's rank correlation (0.77 [p < 0.0001]).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Floor and ceiling effects were not present. The control group was used to interpret the quantitative scores. Sensitivity and specificity were 0.88 and 0.80, respectively. The observations and feedback during interviews showed that there were still difficulties when using the simplified version.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The psychometric properties of the simplified instrument are good, but our findings showed that even the simplified version of the Participation Scale still remains difficult to understand for people with a low education level. Further work on the simplification of this instrument is necessary.
authors: VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. rachelkelders@hotmail.com
authors: Rachel
authors: R
authors: Kelders
authors: Wim
authors: W
authors: van Brakel
authors: Kerstin
authors: K
authors: Beise
authors: Irwanto
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007214:Indonesia; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D058992:Social Participation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards; D055815:Young Adult