Psychometric Evaluation of the Cross-Culturally Adapted Dutch-Language Version of the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth (PEM-CY).
Eefje Kern, Barbara Piškur, Sarah Meuser and 1 others
The Dutch PEM-CY is now validated and shows children with disabilities participate at similar frequency to peers but with significantly lower involvement, facing more environmental barriers.
OTs can use it to identify where the environment is the problem.
Key findings
1The Dutch PEM-CY shows adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's α ≥ 0.70 for most environment scales, with two exceptions at 0.69 and 0.68) and test-retest reliability (ICC ranging 0.60 to 0.88, with two scales at 0.50–0.57), supporting its use in Dutch clinical practice.
2Children with disabilities showed significantly lower involvement in home activities (r = −0.25) and school activities (r = −0.23) compared to peers without disabilities, while home participation frequency and variety did not differ significantly between groups.
3Parents of children with disabilities reported significantly more environmental barriers in all three settings: home (r = −0.53), school (r = −0.57), and community (r = −0.30), with the child's relationships with others and the social, cognitive, and physical demands of activities as consistent restricting factors.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Convenience sample recruited through OT practices and schools, not random; may not represent children with more severe disabilities in secondary care or rehabilitation centres 88% of respondents were mothers, limiting perspective diversity Most children were under 12, so findings for adolescents are based on smaller subgroups Paper version only; it is unknown whether responses would be the same with a digital version Missing values meant different numbers of participants were included for different analyses Single region (Limburg), so results may not generalise to the rest of the Netherlands
Declared interests
No funding received. No conflicts of interest declared. The paper is a revised and supplemented version of the first author's master's thesis.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the known-group differences as evidence that a specific intervention works — this is a cross-sectional validation study, not an intervention trial. The differences describe what parents report about their children's current participation, not the effect of any treatment. Also, two scales ('participates ever' and 'involvement' in school and community) had test-retest reliability below the 0.70 threshold the authors set, so scores on those scales should be interpreted with care.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →