1. The German Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-G): Reliability and Validity of a Novel Assessment of Communicative Participation.
- Author
-
Neumann, Sandra, Salm, Sandra, Rietz, Christian, and Stenneken, Prisca
- Subjects
- *
TEST reliability , *PSYCHOMETRICS , *SPEECH therapy , *CHILDREN , *TEST validity , *COMMUNICATION , *PARENTS , *QUALITY of life , *QUESTIONNAIRES , *SPEECH disorders , *SPEECH therapists - Abstract
Purpose: Our purpose was to explore the validity and reliability of the German Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-G; Thomas-Stonell, Oddson, Robertson, & Rosenbaum, 2010, 2012), which is an authorized adaptation of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (Thomas-Stonell et al., 2010) tool, which measures communicative participation in preschool children. Method: Parents of typically developing children (TDC) and of children with speech impairment (CSI) completed the FOCUS-G and the Questionnaire for Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life in Children (KiddyKINDL; Ravens-Sieberer & Bullinger, 2000). To determine test-retest reliability, the FOCUS-G was readministered to a subsample of parents 1 week later. Results: The FOCUS-G had high values for internal consistency (α = .959, Ω = .941), test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = .974), and split-half reliability (r = .832). Total scores on the FOCUS-G and KiddyKINDL demonstrated significant associations. FOCUS-G total scores and subdomain scores for both samples showed significant correlations, indicating good construct validity. The discriminatory ability of the FOCUS-G was indicated by significantly higher mean scores for TDC (M = 6.03, SD = 0.65) than CSI (M = 5.47, SD = 1.02). Conclusion: The overall good psychometric properties of this novel assessment of communicative participation support its use by speech-language pathologists for clinical and research purposes with German-speaking children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF