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Aims: This study aimed to identify children with restricted community participation and examine the extent to which the child, family, and environmental factors were associated with restricted participation., Methods: A school-based sample of 92 children with disabilities and 391 children without disabilities aged 5-12 years was recruited in Hong Kong. Parents completed the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth and a demographic questionnaire. Moreover, children completed the Children's Depression Inventory. Rasch analysis was used to determine the criteria that differentiated between children with and without participation restriction, based on frequency of activities. Logistic regression was used to identify the factors associated with participation restriction., Results: One hundred seventy-three children (35.8% of the sample), including 42 with disabilities, were identified as having restricted participation. Participation restriction was associated with higher depressive symptoms in children (odds ratio (OR) = 1.05, 95% confidence interval (CI) [1.01, 1.08]), lower environmental resources (OR = 0.97, 95% CI [0.96, 0.99]), and coming from families with three or more children (OR = 2.80, 95% CI [1.44, 5.46])., Conclusions: The results suggest that a sizable number of children are at risk for restricted participation in the community. Healthcare services and strategies that address the associated factors are needed to promote children's community participation.

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between the Children Participation Questionnaire and the Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands., Materials and Methods: Two researchers classified the item contents independently using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Child and Youth version as a guide. Parents of 51 children with intellectual and developmental disabilities completed both measures within one month., Results: The linking results indicated that the two participation measures covered a broad range of life domains, which corresponded well to the conceptually matched Activities and Participation categories/chapters of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Child and Youth version. A significant moderate link (Spearman's ρ coefficient = 0.68, p < 0.01) between the two measures was found, and all of their matched domains (except for the educational domain) also revealed small to moderate associations (ρ = 0.47-0.71, p < 0.01). The paired items that asked identical or similar life situations between the two measures demonstrated varying correlation levels., Conclusion: This study provides evidence for the content and construct validity of the two children's participation measures. The findings also offer important insights about the similarities and differences between the two measures. This knowledge will assist clinicians in selecting outcome measures. Implications for rehabilitation The Children Participation Questionnaire and Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands demonstrate good content and convergent validity. The two measures capture distinctive aspects and/or degrees of children's participation. Clinicians and researchers need to be aware of the similarities and differences between the two measures before selecting outcome measure.

Objective: To describe the development of the Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands, a parent-report questionnaire that assesses children's participation in life situations requiring hand use specifically, and to investigate its construct validity (using Rasch analysis and known-group comparison) and reliability (test-retest reliability and internal consistency)., Design: Cross-sectional, validation, and test-retest studies., Setting: Schools., Participants: Parents/caregivers (N=202) reported on their children aged 2 to 12 years with (n=97) and without disabilities (n=105)., Interventions: Not applicable., Main Outcome Measure: The Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands was developed based on a content review of existing children's participation measures and literature, expert review, and pilot testing. The Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands included 37 items measuring participation diversity, frequency, independence, and desire for change in specific hand-use life situations across 4 domains of self-care, recreation, education, and domestic life and community., Results: Evidence for construct validity of the Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands domains was established through Rasch analysis (after removing 2 misfitting items from the recreational domain and 1 item from the domestic life and community domain). Differences in summary scores of each domain between children with and without disabilities were also significant (P<.01). Test-retest reliability of the Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands was moderate to high (intraclass correlation coefficients, .69-.96), except for the desire for change dimension scale of the recreational domain (.40). Internal consistency was varied across the dimensions/domains., Conclusions: Results provide preliminary evidence for the construct validity and reliability of the Children's Assessment of Participation with Hands that could be used in clinical and research settings to gain a specific understanding of the impact of children's hand-use difficulties on their participation in life situations requiring hand use., (Copyright © 2015 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Many interventions have been used to improve children's hand-related impairments or hand skill performance in functional activities so as to promote life participation. There is thus a need to have suitable instruments assessing children's participation in life situations that specifically require hand use in order to support and evaluate such interventions. This systematic review investigated the availability of potential instruments that can be used to assess children's participation specifically in life situations requiring hand use. Clinical utility and evidence for psychometric properties were also sourced. Database searches initially identified measures that were used to evaluate participation of children aged 2-12 years, involved self- or proxy report or interview administration and had generic application for a range of disabilities/diagnoses. These measures were further evaluated to determine if they fulfilled the above inclusion criteria and contained at least 60% of the items involving hand use. Further searches for psychometric evidence were undertaken for the eligible measures. Fourteen measures were identified and nine met the inclusion criteria. However, none of these measures, except for the Children Helping Out: Responsibilities, Expectations, and Supports (CHORES), contained all items related to hand use. Most of the included measures had limited psychometric properties. Only the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment/Preferences for Activities of Children (CAPE/PAC), the School Function Assessment-Participation section (SFA-P) and the Children Participation Questionnaire (CPQ) revealed sufficient evidence of validity and reliability. The findings suggest a need for adapting existing participation measures or developing new ones that specifically assess participation in life situations requiring hand use to support interventions., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Children's hand skills when performing in real-life contexts have been commonly thought as a possible determinant of their self-care function; however, there is a paucity of research investigating this potential predictive relationship. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence regarding whether children's real-life hand skill performance is contributive to or predictive of their self-care function by considering other child and cultural factors., Methods: A total of 139 typically developing children and 114 with disabilities, ages 2-12 years from Australia and Taiwan, participated in the study. The outcome measures used were the Assessment of Children's Hand Skills (a measure of real-life hand skill performance) and the Personal Living Skills subscale of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales - Classroom Edition (a measure of self-care function)., Results: Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the children's demographic variables (age, gender, disability status, handedness and cultural context) accounted for 43% of the variance of the self-care function in the combined group of children with and without disabilities. Age, presence of disability and cultural context were the statistically significant independent factors. However, after the entry of the real-life hand skill performance factor, the contributing values of age and disability status decreased and the age factor became non-significant. The hand skill performance factor was found to be the strongest, and its addition led to significant increments of 24.6% of the explained variance for children's self-care function. Similar results were also found in the regression analyses based on separate groups of typically developing children or those with disabilities., Conclusions: The findings provide evidence that children's real-life hand skill performance is a contributing factor of their self-care function. The assessment of children's hand skill performance in real-life contexts is therefore needed., (© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: To evaluate to what extent instruments that intend to measure children's participation actually do so, and to what extent their items can be classified according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-Children and Youth (ICF-CY)., Data Sources: A systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, and EMBASE and was limited to the period between January 2000 and May 2011. The search terms of participation, outcome measure, and children were used to identify potential children's participation measures., Data Selection: Instruments were included if they (1) evaluated children's participation based on assessment purpose; (2) were suitable for use with children aged 2 to 12 years; (3) were generic assessments that could be used with a range of disabilities; and (4) involved self-report, proxy report, or interview administrations., Data Extraction: Instruments were obtained from identified full-text articles and were evaluated for inclusion through group discussion. Two researchers further independently reviewed each included instrument to determine which of the items measured participation based on a contemporary definition. These items were also classified using the ICF-CY linking rules to reflect each instrument's content coverage., Data Synthesis: Sixteen instruments were identified with 11 found to have more than half of their items measuring participation, but only the School Function Assessment-Participation section comprised 100% participation items. The participation items in each instrument captured between 3 and 9 ICF-CY Activities and Participation domains. Only the Child and Adolescent Scale of Participation and the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth covered all domains. Among the ICF-CY Activities and Participation domains, the interpersonal interactions and relationships domain was addressed the least., Conclusions: This review revealed differences in the inclusion of participation items in existing children's participation measures and their classification according to the ICF-CY. These differences need to be considered when selecting an instrument., (Copyright © 2014 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background/aim: The Assessment of Children's Hand Skills is a new assessment that utilises a naturalistic observational method to capture children's real-life hand skill performance when engaged at various types of daily activities in everyday living contexts. The Assessment of Children's Hand Skills is designed for use with 2- to 12-year-old children with a range of disabilities or health conditions. The study aimed to investigate construct validity of the Assessment of Children's Hand Skills in Australian children., Methods: Rasch analysis was used to examine internal construct validity of the Assessment of Children's Hand Skills in a mixed sample of 53 children with disabilities (including autism spectrum disorder, developmental/genetic disorders and physical disabilities) and 85 typically developing children. External construct validity was examined by correlating with three questionnaires evaluating daily living skills and hand skills., Results: Rasch goodness-of-fit analysis suggested that all 22 activity items and 19 of 20 hand skill items in the Assessment of Children's Hand Skills measured a single construct. The Assessment of Children's Hand Skills items were placed in a clinically meaningful hierarchy from easy to hard, and the difficulty range of the items also matched the majority of children with disabilities and typically developing preschool-aged children. Moderate to high correlations (0.59 ≤ Spearman's ρ coefficients ≤ 0.89, P < 0.01) were found with the assessments of daily living and fine motor skills., Conclusion: This study provided preliminary evidence supporting the construct validity of the Assessment of Children's Hand Skills for its clinical application in assessing children's real-life hand skill performance in Australian contexts., (© 2012 The Authors Australian Occupational Therapy Journal © 2012 Occupational Therapy Australia.)