Abstract
Background‘About My Child’ 19-item version (AMC-19) is a parent-report measure developed to assess the complexity of a child’s life due to biological, psychological, social and environmental issues, that can be completed in approximately 5 min. AMC measures two dimensions of complexity: parental concerns and impact on the child. This paper examines the psychometric properties and parent-reported utility of the AMC-19 for children with disabilities or special health care needs.MethodData were gathered from two Canadian studies at CanChild: the ‘AMC-19 Pilot’ study and the ‘Service Utilization and Outcomes (SUO)’ study. The AMC-19 Pilot study data allowed us to explore internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as parental responses to two open-ended questions on the utility of the AMC-19. The SUO study provided data for analyses of internal consistency and scale property validation with type of diagnosis and service needs.ResultsThe test-retest ICC was r = 0.83 for concerns and r = 0.87 for impact. Cronbach’s alpha across both studies ranged from 0.80 to 0.90. Parents’ comments on the AMC-19’s utility indicated support for the AMC-19, in particular to identify therapy needs and goals.ConclusionsThe AMC-19 demonstrates strong psychometric properties supporting it as a valuable measure for describing the level of complexity among children with disabilities. We recommend using the AMC-19 in health services research and clinical settings to build dialogue between family and therapists due to its utility reported by parents.
Highlights
Understanding and assessing childhood impairment and disability remain significant public health concerns
The About My Child (AMC)-19 demonstrates strong psychometric properties supporting it as a valuable measure for describing the level of complexity among children with disabilities
We recommend using the AMC-19 in health services research and clinical settings to build dialogue between family and therapists due to its utility reported by parents
Summary
Understanding and assessing childhood impairment and disability remain significant public health concerns. More than 93 million (or 5.1%) children and adolescents below age 15 live with a childhood disability around the world [1]. Children with disabilities are often diagnosed with multiple ‘primary’ health conditions, while associated impairments (‘co-morbidities’) vary greatly in both scope and severity, resulting in a need for a wide variety of additional services and supports [2]. Defining complexity has proved to be a troublesome task by virtue of the clinician’s dependence on contextual and subjective information. Due to the lack of a clear definition, “complexity” has been erroneously conflated with other constructs such as co-morbidity and severity [4, 5].
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