Assessment of environmental factors in disabled children 2-12 years: development and reliability of the Craig Hospital Inventory of Environmental Factors (CHIEF) for Children-Parent Version.
BACKGROUND
Children with disabilities and their families experience environmental barriers in the school and community environments. There is a need to understand and appropriately measure environmental factors that influence activity and participation for disabled children. The purpose of this paper is to describe the adaptation process of the Craig Hospital Inventory of Environmental Factors (CHIEF) to make it suitable as a parent proxy measure for disabled children aged 2-12 years.


METHODS
The adaptation process consisted of four steps using data from previous research conducted at CanChild: (i) analysis of item-total correlations from all items on the CHIEF; (ii) frequency of endorsement; (iii) determination of the representativeness of the questions; and (iv) correlations on selected items. Once the items were selected, a test-retest reliability study was conducted.


RESULTS
The internal consistencies (α) for the time 1 and time 2 administrations were 0.76 and 0.78, respectively. Test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was ICC = 0.73 for the total product score.


CONCLUSIONS
The 10-item CHIEF for Children-Parent Version is an acceptable, easy-to-complete and reliable measure of perceived environmental barriers for disabled children 2-12 years of age.
CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research (http://www.canchild.ca), McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
D
D
McCauley
J W
JW
Gorter
D J
DJ
Russell
P
P
Rosenbaum
M
M
Law
M
M
Kertoy
D001107:Architectural Accessibility; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019988:Children with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D019727:Proxy; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012931:Social Environment; D058992:Social Participation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards