Young Children’s Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM): Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation in children with and without developmental needs in Singapore

Abstract

Measuring the participation of young children is important in informing their health and well being and designing rehabilitation services. To our knowledge, there are no participation measures that have been developed or adapted to the Singapore context. The Young Children’s Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM) was developed in North America and its content may not be relevant to the Singapore context. Three studies were conducted to culturally adapt and validate the YC-PEM with children with and without developmental needs in Singapore. These studies involved (1) adapting the YC-PEM culturally based on interviews with 10 service providers and 10 parents, (2) evaluating the psychometric properties of the adapted YC-PEM with 151 children with and without developmental needs in Singapore and, (3) examining the validity and utility of the YC-PEM to describe and compare the participation patterns between children with and without developmental needs in their childcare/preschool and community environments.

The outcome of this dissertation is a culturally relevant and validated YC-PEM (Singapore) for young children with and without developmental needs, aged 0 to 7 years old. The YC-PEM (Singapore) could be used by service providers to provide participation-focused intervention and researchers to implement population-based research to improve the participation of young children in Singapore. New knowledge has been developed through the cultural adaption process of the YC-PEM. Firstly, it is important to adapt instruments culturally before they are used in a new culture, even when language translation is not required. Secondly, cognitive interviews were found to be useful in the cultural adaption process. Thirdly, participation and perceived environmental support differences were found between children with and without developmental needs in Singapore as well as children between Singapore and America. Cultural influences such as the society’s political agenda and parental beliefs were hypothesized to have potential influence on the participation of young children.