Development and Content Validity of the Participation and Sensory Environment Questionnaire.
Beth Pfeiffer, Wendy Coster, Carole Tucker and 1 others
PMID 30760943WHAT IT FOUND
Parents and caregivers of young children with autism spectrum disorder described sensory environments as both barriers and facilitators to daily participation, and their effort to support activities varied with how meaningful the activity was.
A draft questionnaire was built from these themes.
Key findings
01Parents and caregivers described the sensory environment as both a barrier and a facilitator to participation.
02Parental effort to support participation was a central theme, and parents linked effort to activities they viewed as meaningful or important.
03Parents and caregivers described two main strategy types: modifying sensory aspects of the environment and reducing behavioral responses associated with sensory factors.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Participants were 34 parents and caregivers recruited through ASD support groups, agencies, and social media, so the sample may not represent all families of young children with ASD. The paper confirms ASD diagnosis by parent report and by parent, medical, or school reports, not by a clinical evaluation described in the article. The study developed a draft item pool and established content validity only. It did not test reliability, validity, or usefulness in research and practice.
Declared interests
This study was supported by a pilot grant to the first author from the Boston Rehabilitation Outcome Center under a Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant (#5R24HD065688-05), with additional funding from a Temple University Inter-department Research Grant.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use the questionnaire as a validated measure or conclude that sensory-environment assessment improves participation. This paper only developed items and checked content validity; it did not test reliability, validity, or usefulness in research and practice.