Cross-cultural validation of the German Paediatric Evaluation Disability Inventory - Computer Adaptive Test : a comparative study with American normative standard scores

Abstract

The Paediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI), has been revised as a computer adaptive test; the PEDI-CAT. Many items have been added making it relevant for children and youth from birth to 20 years of age. The PEDI-CAT measures performance in the Functional Skills domains of Daily Activities, Mobility and Social/Cognitive. The PEDI-CAT’s Responsibility domain measures the extent to which the caregiver or child takes responsibility for managing complex, multi-step life tasks. In this exploratory study the normative scores of children with typical development of Switzerland (n = 51) and Germany (n = 61) were compared with the American normative sample to investigate its applicability. The mean age of the children was 5.78 years with a standard deviation of 1.39 years and a range of 4.10 years. Statistically significant differences in comparison with the mean normative scores with moderate to strong effect were found in all domains. Still, 95% or more of all scores from the participants were within a 2 standard deviation range from the mean normative scores. The results indicate that the normative scores should right now be applied to the German version of the PEDI-CAT with caution. Further studies are needed to further investigate applicability of the normative values