Questionnaire for assessing parents' concerns about their child with hydrocephalus

Abstract

The many concerns of parents of children with hydrocephalus have not previously been assessed using a reliable, quantitative measurement. The development and preliminary use of a questionnaire to measure the concerns of these parents is reported. A general health status measure for hydrocephalus was developed concurrently. Items were generated primarily from parent focus groups resulting in a comprehensive list of 22 unique parental concern items. The most important of these items, as selected by another sample of parents of 60 children (27 females, 33 males; mean age 8y 4mo, [SD 4y 6mo]) were retained for the final questionnaire. This 9-item parental concerns questionnaire was tested for reliability and construct validity (by assessing correlations with various independent measures of health status, including Health Utilities Index-2 and Impact-on-Family Scale) using a cohort consisting of the parents of 80 children (39 females, 41 males; mean age 10y, [SD 3y 6mo]). An exploratory analysis was performed to determine which patient variables were associated with greater parental concern. The parental concerns questionnaire demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (0.86, 95% CI 0.77-0.92) and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=0.89). As expected, interrater reliability was somewhat lower (0.67, 95% CI 0.49-0.79). Construct validity was demonstrated by consistently moderate Pearson's correlations with several independent measures of the child's health. The presence of epilepsy and younger patient age appeared to be significantly associated with greater parental concern. This new questionnaire has demonstrated very good psychometric properties. It can be used to broaden the scope of future clinical research in pediatric hydrocephalus to include the impact on parents.