Development and validation of a questionnaire to measure the service needs of families with children with developmental disabilities.

The aim of this project was to develop and validate a Service Needs Questionnaire (SNQ) on the service needs of families with children with developmental disabilities. The SNQ and a measure of parenting stress were administered to 105 parents of children diagnosed with learning/behaviour problems and 233 parents of children attending primary schools. Initial Rasch analysis results indicated inadequate distinction of the categories and the fit statistics of three items were outside the acceptable range. The categories were collapsed and the removal of two misfitting items resulted in a scale which conformed to the Rasch expectations. For validity, the scale correlated positively with parenting stress, and it could differentiate between parents of children diagnosed with learning/behaviour problems and those attending primary schools. The internal consistency estimate (the Cronbach alpha) was above .70. The SNQ could be used to help identify the needs of families with children with developmental disabilities.