Abstract
Purpose :
Children with visual impairment or blindness often experience developmental issues and more difficulties with participation compared to peers. The Participation and Activity Inventory for Children and Youth (PAI-CY) was developed to measure participation needs. Network analysis is an approach to explore interrelations between questionnaire items in order to capture complex interactions as a reflection of the overall construct of measurement. After factor analysis and item response theory analysis revealed no underlying structure or model fit, this strategy was taken to investigate the construct of the PAI-CY, from children aged 7-12 years and their parents’ perspectives.
Methods :
Children and their parents (N=195) completed the 55-item PAI-CY via face-to-face interviews and internet-based questionnaires, respectively. Based on basic psychometric analysis, 8 items were deleted mainly due to missing values. Networks were modeled for the remaining 47 items for children and parents separately in R, along with visualizations of the shared and differential connections between self-report and proxy-report formats. Networks were compared on domain and item level, and included a centrality and differential analysis.
Results :
The network structure was dissimilar; for children domains evolved around social interaction and school, whereas for parents clear domains were related to acceptance, self-reliance, communication, mobility and leisure time. Centrality analysis showed that in the children’s network, ‘playing imaginary games’, ‘inviting a friend to play at home’ and ‘estimating the physical distance to others’ were most connected to other items.
Conclusions :
Network modeling can be considered a novel approach in psychometric analysis in ophthalmology. It was helpful to understand the data structure of the construct of participation from the perspectives of young children with visual impairment and their parents and which revealed their different perspectives. When interventions for children with visual impairment are provided to improve the most central activities, other items within the network structure might also be positively affected. This may lead to an improved participation in future.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.