BACKGROUND

School experience is an important part of the life of children with developmental disabilities (DD) and their families. Research suggests that parents of children vary in their level of satisfaction with their child's school, but methodology and results have varied and no consistent reliable measure of school satisfaction exists. This paper presents a new brief measure of school satisfaction along with preliminary information on its psychometric properties.

METHOD

Parents (n = 185) of children with moderate to severe DD completed a longer questionnaire that included the 9-item GO4KIDDS School Satisfaction Scale.

RESULTS

The GO4KIDDS School Satisfaction Scale demonstrates high internal consistency reliability (α = 0.93), good item-total correlations, and strong correlations with a single-item rating of school satisfaction.

CONCLUSIONS

Results support reliability and validity, making the proposed scale valuable for survey research investigating school satisfaction among parents of children with DD.