Abstract
Children have the right to participate in child protection investigations. Although research suggests that participation is related to positive outcomes of children in the child protection system, children’s participation is not always facilitated in practice. Therefore, it is important to validate tools that can be used to further investigate children’s participation. We examined the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, internal validity, and external validity) of the Meaningful Participation Assessment Tool (MPAT), which measures the degree in which child protection professionals enable children’s participation in child protection investigations. The MPAT is based on the Model of Meaningful Participation (Bouma et al. 2018) and distinguishes three domains of children’s participation in child protection: 1) informing, 2) hearing, and 3) involving in decision-making. It consists of 13 items. We validated the MPAT based on data from 292 child protection cases. We concluded that the MPAT was reliable, internally valid and externally valid. The MPAT’s reliability was reflected by substantial Cohen’s Kappa coefficients ranging from .63 to .92. The Mokken scale analysis revealed a strong scale of 8 items (H = .70, Rho = .89). Items on seeing and hearing children about child protection topics seemed relatively more easy to achieve compared to items on providing children with information, which suggests that child protection workers may struggle most with informing children. Lastly, we concluded that the MPAT might be externally valid because we found higher MPAT scores for subgroups based on child protection institution, age, and gender, which was in line with our expectations.
Highlights
According to the United Nations Convention of the Right of the Child (CRC), all children have the right to participate in procedures that affect them, including children involved in the child protection system (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 1989)
We investigated the external validity of Meaningful Participation Assessment Tool (MPAT) by comparing different subgroups based on age, child protection institution, gender on participation sum scores, using t-tests in R (R Core Team 2014)
We drew positive conclusions regarding MPAT’s external validity when we found higher MPAT scores for groups for which we expected higher participation scores based on scientific literature
Summary
According to the United Nations Convention of the Right of the Child (CRC), all children have the right to participate in procedures that affect them, including children involved in the child protection system (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 1989). According to the General Comment 12 of the CRC, meaningful participation of children should consist of four key elements (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 2009). Providing children with feedback ensures that children’s participation is not just a formality but aims to ensure their views are taken into account in decision-making processes. The CRC emphasizes that all children, irrespective of their developmental age, have the rights to participate in procedures that affect them. It is important to execute participatory practices in such a way that it fits the developmental level of the child This implies child protection professionals should communicate with children such a way that fits their developmental level (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 2009)
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