Reliability of the Family Impact of Assistive Technology Scale for Families of Young Children With Cerebral Palsy
Presented to the 22nd International Seating Symposium, March 2, 2006, Vancouver, BC, Canada, and the 23rd International Seating Symposium, March 9, 2007, Orlando, FL.
Abstract
Ryan SE, Campbell KA, Rigby PJ. Reliability of the Family Impact of Assistive Technology Scale for families of young children with cerebral palsy.
Objective
To examine the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the Family Impact of Assistive Technology Scale (FIATS) when used to measure the perceptions of parents about important aspects of family life that may be influenced by their children’s use of assistive devices.
Design
Repeated measure.
Setting
Homes of 50 participating families.
Participants
Parents of young children with cerebral palsy.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measure
The FIATS.
Results
Through an a priori item-reduction process, we reduced the length of the FIATS from 89 to 64 items. We retained 8 of the 9 original subscales. The 8 subscales included the following: autonomy, caregiver relief, contentment, doing activities, effort, family and social interaction, caregiver supervision, and safety. Remaining items of the removed subscale (technology acceptance) correlated well with the subscale total, but did not relate well to the FIATS total score. This construct was retained as a separate but noncontributing scale within the FIATS. The overall FIATS and its 8 contributing subscales had acceptable internal consistencies and test-retest reliabilities.
Conclusions
The FIATS shows promise as a homogeneous and reproducible multidimensional measure of dimensions of child and family life. We plan further testing to examine the sensitivity and clinical meaningfulness of change scores on the FIATS.
aBloorview Research Institute, Bloorview Kids Rehab, Toronto, ON, Canada
bDepartment of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
cDepartment of Public Health Sciences, and Graduate Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Correspondence to Stephen E. Ryan, BESc, PEng, Bloorview Research Institute, Bloorview Kids Rehab, 150 Kilgour Rd, Toronto, ON M4G 1R8, Canada
Supported by the SickKids Foundation/Institute for Human Development, Child and Youth Health-Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant no. XG 04-088) and Bloorview Childrens Hospital Foundation (grant no. F04-11).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit upon the author(s) or upon any organization with which the author(s) is/are associated.