Abstract
Developmental disorders (DDs) in children are a priority condition and guidelines have been developed for their management within low-resource community settings. However, a key obstacle is lack of open access, reliable and valid tools that lay health workers can use to evaluate the impact of such programmes on child outcomes. We adapted and validated the World Health Organization's Disability Assessment Schedule for children (WHODAS-Child), a lay health worker-administered functioning-related tool, for children with DDs in Pakistan. Lay health workers administered a version of the WHODAS-Child to parents of children with DDs (N = 400) and without DDs (N = 400), aged 2-12 years, after it was adapted using qualitative study. Factor analysis, validity, reliability and sensitivity to change analyses were conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the adapted outcome measure. Among 800 children, 58% of children were male [mean (s.d.) age 6.68 (s.d. = 2.89)]. Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed a robust factor structure [χ2/df 2.86, RMSEA 0.068 (90% CI 0.064-0.073); Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) 0.92; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) 0.93; Incremental Fit Index (IFI) 0.93]. The tool demonstrated high internal consistency (α 0.82-0.94), test-retest [Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) 0.71-0.98] and inter-data collector (ICC 0.97-0.99) reliabilities; good criterion (r -0.71), convergent (r -0.35 to 0.71) and discriminative [M (s.d.) 52.00 (s.d. = 21.97) v. 2.14 (s.d. = 4.00); 95% CI -52.05 to -47.67] validities; and adequate sensitivity to change over time (ES 0.19-0.23). The lay health worker administrated version of adapted WHODAS-Child is a reliable, valid and sensitive-to-change measure of functional disability in children aged 2-12 years with DDs in rural community settings of Pakistan.
Highlights
Developmental disorders (DDs) in children are a priority condition and guidelines have been developed for their management within low-resource community settings
Descriptive statistics for Developmental Disorders-Children Disability Assessment Schedule (DD-CDAS) global disability scores and domain scores were examined for children with and without developmental disorders
We found moderate to high correlation coefficients between DD-CDAS in comparison with the Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scale II (VABS II) (Table 3)
Summary
Developmental disorders (DDs) in children are a priority condition and guidelines have been developed for their management within low-resource community settings. The lay health worker administrated version of adapted WHODAS-Child is a reliable, valid and sensitive-to-change measure of functional disability in children aged 2– 12 years with DDs in rural community settings of Pakistan. Measuring functioning of an individual in various life domains, in different contexts, and for various states of health and disease is a critical piece of information to inform individualized intervention plans, programmes and health policies (Murray, 2002) To materialize this vision, standardized and uniform measurement frameworks such as the ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health) (WHO, 2001) and tools based on the ICF such as the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS-2.0) for adults have been developed and validated (Üstün et al, 2010). It has been utilized in formulating and monitoring individualized treatment plans and evaluating effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of public health interventions for adults
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