PREDICTORS OF PARTICIPATION AT HOME OF CHILDREN FROM AGE 0 TO 5 YEARS WITH AND WITHOUT DISABILITIES

Participation is currently understood as a family of constructs, which include: (1) frequency with which an activity is carried out; (2) level of involvement; (3) personal preference regarding the task; (4) competence, which is the ability to perform a certain task; and (5) self-perception, related to the recognition of one's ability to perform tasks. In children up to 5 years of age, who spend most of their time at home, participation can be affected by environmental factors, whether structural, family or socioeconomic. Participation can be measured through the Young Children's Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM), translated into Portuguese as Medida da Participação e do Ambiente – Crianças Pequenas, which is a questionnaire applied to parents/guardians, which assesses the frequency, involvement, desire for change, and environmental factors in the home, daycare/preschool, and community sections. To identify predictors for participation at home by children between zero and five years of age with and without disabilities. Cross-sectional and descriptive study. Those responsible for children with or without disabilities, from age 0 to 5 years and 11 months, recruited from university hospitals and teaching clinics through spontaneous demand were included. The 143 participants answered a sociodemographic questionnaire followed by the application of the YC-PEM. The outcome variables were frequency, with a mean score from 0 to 7, and involvement, from 0 to 5, of YC-PEM. The variables analyzed as predictors were environmental factors of the YC-PEM, classified into supports, barriers, environmental helpfulness, environmental resources and overall environmental support; sex, age in months and typicality (with or without disability) of the children; gender, age in years and schooling of those responsible; family income. The predictor analysis was carried out in two steps: 1) Spearman's correlation check to measure the association between variables, significant if p