Assessing the extent of shared decision making in Pediatrics: Preliminary psychometric evaluation of the German CollaboRATE pediatric scales for patients aged 7-18 years, parents and parent-proxy reports.

Objective: To conduct a preliminary evaluation of psychometric properties of CollaboRATE ^pediatric , a set of three scales to assess shared decision making (SDM) with pediatric patients, parents and parents on behalf of their children (parent-proxy reports). As secondary objectives we examined the scales' distributional characteristics, acceptability, and agreement between scales.
Methods: Patients aged ≥ 7 years and parents were recruited in two outpatient facilities providing healthcare services for children with neurological and behavioral health conditions. We collected 46, 169 and 227 pediatric patient, parent-proxy and parent reports, respectively. Convergent, divergent and discriminative validity were investigated. Acceptability of the scales and agreement between patient and parent-proxy reports were explored by assessing item nonresponse and Bland-Altman plots.
Results: While convergent and divergent validity were established for the parent scale, discriminative validity was not demonstrated for any of the scales. The scales showed good to excellent acceptability. Parent-proxy reports agreed to a moderate extent with patients' self-reports of SDM.
Conclusion: CollaboRATE ^pediatric offers a starting point for parsimoniously assessing SDM in Pediatrics, however further psychometric testing is warranted.
Practice Implications: Given limited psychometric support for the pediatric patient scale, we recommend using both the pediatric patient and parent-proxy report scales to assess SDM in pediatric patients until further psychometric testing is concluded.
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