Toward a Measure of Communicative Participation for Children with Developmental Speech Disorders

The general lack of assessment tools that adequately measure communicative participation has been well documented in the adult literature. However, there has been no systematic attempt to document the availability of these assessment tools in pediatric populations. The purpose of this literature review was to investigate the availability of patient-reported outcome (PRO) tools that measure communicative participation in children. Results indicate that there are no such tools that measure communicative participation in children at this time. In an effort to inspire researchers to develop these tools, the following guidelines for the development of pediatric PRO tools are discussed: (1) consider age-based criteria for tool development and administration, (2) design and format the tool specifically for the target age group, (3) establish content validity, (4) determine whether a parent proxy-report tool is necessary, and (5) consider cross-cultural issues.