Development and validation of the Children’s Competence in Decision-Making Scale

Background/ Literature review
Measuring competence in children’s ability to make decisions is laden with conceptual problems. A variety of competence measuring tools exist however, no scales were found that measured competence in children.
Aim
To develop, test and validate a competence measuring tool for children aged 8-12 years with long term conditions.
Design
A convergent sequential mixed methods validation design was used.
Methods
Four stages of questionnaire development were used following recommended
procedures. The qualitative arm explored the experiences of children aged 8 to 12 years about being involved in decision making. This data was used to develop the tool which was then subject to psychometric testing.
Results
The result showed an overall alpha of 0.86. Additionally, the alpha ‘if items deleted’ analysis did not show considerable variation and did not have any value below 0.7.
Conclusion
The scale offers practitioners an ability to test the competence levels of children in order to decide the degree of involvement that children may want to have in the decision-making process. This in turn may help to plan care in a more effective way and may have an impact on adherence levels in self-management of illness.