Development and validation of the Paediatric Care and Needs Scale (PCANS) for assessing support needs of children and youth with acquired brain injury.

AIM

The Paediatric Care and Needs Scale (PCANS) is a newly developed scale that assesses support needs following childhood acquired brain injury (ABI). It yields three measures of support: overall, extent and intensity. The developmental process of the PCANS is described and concurrent and construct validity examined.

METHOD

In the validation study, 32 parents/caregivers of children with ABI aged 5-18 years completed the PCANS and other validating measures: Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS), Functional Independence Measure for Children (Wee-FIM) and King's Outcome Scale of Childhood Head Injury (KOSCHI). VABS and Wee-FIM sub-scales examining similar and dissimilar domains to the PCANS were used to investigate convergent and divergent validity, respectively. Discriminant validity analysis used sub-groups dichotomized by VABS and KOSCHI data.

RESULTS

Statistically significant correlation coefficients of moderate-to-strong magnitude were found between the PCANS support intensity score and most of the VABS, Wee-FIM and KOSCHI variables (r(s) = -0.46 to r(s) = -0.77, p < 0.01). Some evidence for convergent and divergent validity was also found. Correlation coefficients between similar domains of the PCANS and other scales were moderately high (e.g. VABS socialization vs PCANS psychosocial items, r(s) = -0.64, p < 0.01). Conversely, correlation coefficients between dissimilar domains were low (e.g. Wee-FIM self-care vs PCANS psychosocial items, r(s) = -0.29). In terms of discriminant group differences, PCANS support extent and intensity scores were able to distinguish between sub-groups dichotomized by VABS and KOSCHI scores.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide preliminary evidence for the validity of the PCANS for assessing support needs after paediatric ABI.