Introduction

Current developments in the health sector have promoted the necessity of having valid and reliable assessments in practice in Switzerland. Occupational therapists as a member of a caring profession are concerned with the integration of people with disabilities into community living and the promotion of their full participation in society. More specifically, the focus of occupational therapist is the person’s ability to perform those daily life tasks that they need and/or want to perform. The PEDI gathers information on functional performance and measures a child’s capability and skill in performing selected functional activities within the domains of self-care, mobility, and social function on three scales. The PEDI is one of the most commonly used assessments for children with disabilities originally designed for the use in the USA. However the PEDI has not been validated for the German speaking countries.

Objective

To crossculturally adapt and validate the PEDI for the German-speaking part of Europe.

The procedure of cross-culturally validating assessments includes the following steps:

Translation and adaptation

• Translation


• Synthesis


• Back translation


• Expert committee review


• Content validity and clinical feasibility

Evaluation of psychometric properties of the translated PEDI

• Reliability (inter-interviewer, test-retest, internal consistency)


• Discriminative validity

Conclusion

The necessity for valid and reliable assessments for occupational therapy is undoubted. The procedure of adapting an existing assessment and calibrating it for another culture is less resource intensive than developing a new one. All the same, the procedure is a long one and it is important to carefully select the assessment to be adapted.

PEDI-D Manual

Stephen M. Haley, Wendy J. Coster, Larry H. Ludlow, Jane Haltiwanger, Peter Andrellos: PEDI-D. Assessment zur Erfassung von Aktivitäten des täglichen Lebens bei Kindern mit und ohne Beeinträchtigung. Aus dem Amerikanischen übersetzt und bearbeitet von Christina Schulze und Julie Page. Edition VITA ACTIVA. Schulz-Kirchner Verlag: Idstein.