Highlights
- •A measure of parents' responses to pain-related school problems in youth is needed.
- •Such a measure, the Parent Responses to School Functioning, was developed with expert input and tested.
- •Subtests of the measure include parents' distress, trust in school, and expectations.
- •The final 16-item measure shows good reliability, consistency, and validity.
- •The measure has clinical utility and expands research on parents of youth with pain.
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.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 17, 2017
Accepted:
June 24,
2017
Received in revised form:
June 22,
2017
Received:
May 1,
2017
Footnotes
The study was completed with support from the Sara Page Mayo Endowment for Pediatric Pain Research and Treatment to Charles B. Berde MD, PhD, and the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Supplementary data accompanying this article are available online at www.jpain.org and www.sciencedirect.com.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the American Pain Society
