Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Snowdon and Steward-Brown (1997) reported in their systematic review that there is a need to empirically assess the effect of amblyopia treatment on family life and psychological well-being of the child. It appears that the experience of amblyopia treatment, particularly occlusion therapy, poses a degree of distress to both the patient and their carers. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support such a claim as well as a reliable and validated scale to measure psychosocial effect of amblyopia treatment. Hence this study aims to develop a reliable disease-specific measure, the Perceived Psychosocial Questionnaire (PPQ) to study the psychosocial effects of occlusion therapy on children as perceived by carers. Methods: PPQ consists of 10 questions relating to general psychosocial effect of amblyopia treatment on the child as perceived by the carer. These items were generated following a focus group consisting of doctors, a psychologist, orthoptists and parents. The PPQ was distributed to 38 primary carers of children with amblyopia. Cronbach Alpha was used to establish the internal consistency of the 10 items. Test-retest reliability analysis was also conducted. Results: PPQ obtained an acceptable internal consistency (Alpha = 0.72). The test-retest analysis indicated good reliability (r = 0.62, p=0.024). Conclusion: The analysis of the data indicates that the PPQ has obtained adequate reliability and could be used as a tool to measure the general psychosocial effect of amblyopia treatment as perceived by carers.
Keywords: 313 amblyopia • 359 clinical research methodology