Young Children’s Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM): Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Reliability, and Validity of Turkish Version

We investigated the psychometric properties of a Turkish version of the Young Children’s Participation and Environment Measure (YC-PEM-T). Our participants were 367 children (212 children with disabilities and 155 children without disabilities; M age = 40.76 months, SD = 20.33; range 0–71 months) and their parents, who were selected by a convenience sampling method. We translated and cross-culturally adapted the original YC-PEM from English to Turkish (YC-PEM-T). We found the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the YC-PEM-T to be good with a Croanbach’s alpha ranging from .68 to .94, and intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .69 to .89 after the YC-PEM-T was administered twice to 100 parents within a three week period. In a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) we compared YC-PEM-T scores between children with and without the presence of a disability and found significant differences (p < .05). While we found significant differences between three different age groups, they did not follow consistently. To evaluate discriminant validity, we followed up these ANOVAs with post-hoc analyses when results were statistically significant. Regarding concurrent validity, there were strong to very strong relationships between scores on the participation part of the YC-PEM-T and both the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI; .701 < r < .854, p < .001), and the European Child Environment Questionnaire (ECEQ; - .632 < r < - .690, p < .001). We concluded that the YC-PEM-T is a valid, reliable, and culturally adapted tool for evaluating daily life participation and adaptation to environmental factors in young Turkish children. We can recommend the YC-PEM-T for use in clinical settings and for epidemiological research to assess young children’s participation in activities in the home, preschool and community. We also recommend that future investigators examine other psychometric properties of this scale, including its interpretation and capacity to differentiate varied diagnostic and disability groups.