Applicability and Adaptation of Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Standard measurement tools are designed to evaluate the patient capabilities, produce objective assessment, and offer reliable data. In the Arab world there is a shortage of valid Arabic translated and adapted measurement tools. Paediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) is a wildly used tool that measures the capability and performance among disabled children. However it is a culturally sensitive tool, influenced by parents and caregivers believes and values, which hinders its use in the Arab world. PURPOSE: To determine the cross-cultural applicability of PEDI among Saudi children and to establish a new adapted version of Arabic PEDI. METHODS: Applicability was tested in the first part of the study. Arabic translated PEDI was administered in the form of structured interviews to the mothers of 52 healthy children in the age range (1.0 to 6.9) years who were recruited from different kindergartens, 20 of those children participated in testing the inter-rater and intra-rater reliability. In the second part of the study, adaptation of the Arabic translated PEDI was conducted following recent scientific guidelines in the field of cross-cultural research. A committee which consists of paediatric physician, family physician, physical therapist, social worker and a mother reviewed the Arabic translated version of PEDI, and a thirty three health related professionals completed a validity questionnaire to test content validity of Arabic translated PEDI. CONCLUSION: Saudi children scores significantly deviated from the original PEDI reference values, which may be attributed to intercultural differences. This highlights the importance of cultural validation and norming the Arabic version of PEDI. Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability testing showed high agreement of the measurement. Saudi version of PEDI was adapted, after performing equivalency testing and added culturally related items and examples to complete the adaptation process.