Development of the Parent Responses to School Functioning Questionnaire

Abstract

Parents play an important role in supporting school functioning in youth with chronic pain, but no validated tools exists to assess parental responses to child and adolescent pain behaviors in the school context. Such a tool would be useful in identifying targets of change to reduce pain-related school impairment. The goal of this study was to develop and preliminarily validate the Parent Responses to School Functioning Questionnaire (PRSF), a parent self-report measure of this construct. After initial expert review and pilot testing, the measure was administered to 418 parents of children (ages 6-17 years) seen for initial multidisciplinary chronic pain clinic evaluation. The final 16-item PRSF showed evidence of good internal consistency (α = .82) and 2-week test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = .87). Criterion validity was demonstrated by significant correlations with school absence rates and overall school functioning, and construct validity was demonstrated by correlations with general parental responses to pain. Three subscales emerged capturing parents' personal distress, parents' level of distrust of the school, and parents' expectations and behaviors related to their child's management of challenging school situations. These results provide preliminary support for the PRSF as a psychometrically sound tool to assess parents' responses to child pain in the school setting.

Perspective: The 16-item PRSF measures parental responses to their child's chronic pain in the school context. The clinically useful measure can inform interventions aimed reducing functional disability in children with chronic pain by enhancing parents' ability to respond adaptively to child pain behaviors.

Keywords: Child and adolescent; chronic pain; measure; parents; school function.