Special Considerations When Conducting Measurements With Children

Abstract

Clinical care of children and research investigations focused on children are dependent upon well-developed and child-sensitive measurement tools. However, measurement protocols involving children continue to challenge clinicians and researchers. A major reason for this problem is the paucity of reliable and valid measurement instruments that can be efficiently and effectively used with children. Conducting measurements with children is often difficult because the cognitive, emotional, social, psychological, and physiological characteristics and skills of children are different at the various stages of child development. In most instances, these differences indicate that the same measurement instrument or approach cannot be used successfully with children of all ages. Therefore, a measurement instrument that may work quite well for an 8-year-old child might be quite inappropriate for a 2-year-old or a child who is 12 years old. For investigators who seek to study children across developmental stages or compare children at various stages of development, this is a major challenge because few instruments exist that can reliably and validty measure children on a variable across the various ages and stages of development. Usually, a different measurement tool is required for children at each stage of development, and scores often do not have equitable meaning across the various stages. Hence, appropriate comparisons of children across developmental stages are difficult. Generally, the younger the child the more difficult it is to measure psychosocial variables. This is the case because most psychosocial variables require verbal communication by the person who is the target of such measurements. Clearly, young children are often not verbally capable of effectively communicating their emotional or social perceptions; and neither do they typically have the level of comprehension and reading and writing ability to respond to questionnaires or interviews. Conducting psychosocial measurements with infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and young school-age children is particularly challenging because self-report is a common approach to collecting data on psychosocial variables. Self-report is of no use with infants, of questionable usefulness with toddlers, and of limited usefulness with preschoolers and young school-age children. Because self-report approaches need to be tailored to the cognitive and social skills of the child, this means that interviews may be useful with children who are verbal but who do not have reading ability. Interview schedules would need to take into account the child's age and stage of development in regard to level of comprehension, typical style of communicating, and language ability. Therefore, even when children can communicate verbally, cognitive and social skills vary across stages of development, which may make it inappropriate to use the same interview schedule or questionnaire across age groups or even across older developmental stages. Whether an instrument developed for children can be effectively used across developmental stages depends upon the nature of the concept that is the focus of measurement and the approach to the measurement employed. In general, concepts that are more concrete, that are experienced similarly across developmental stages, and that are amenable to observation are more likely to be measurable with the same instrument across developmental stages. Concepts that are more abstract, that may be perceived differently at the various stages of development, and that require verbal reports are less amenable to being measured with the same instrument across developmental stages. Concrete concepts tend to be simpler and easier to quantify. They are typically more likely to be observable or require a simple response. The observational approach to measurement is usually effective for use with persons who are verbal and nonverbal. Therefore, this approach can be employed across developmental stages, particularly for younger age groups. …