Functional status II(R). A measure of child health status

Med Care. 1990 Nov;28(11):1041-55. doi: 10.1097/00005650-199011000-00006.

Abstract

Few measures are available to assess the health status of the growing numbers of children who now survive long-term with chronic physical disorders. A Functional Status Measure, FS I, that had considerable promise for measuring individual child health status and characterizing populations was developed in 1978. This paper describes a revised version of that measures. Data were collected using a new sample of 732 children (aged 0 to 16 years) with and without chronic physical conditions in order to assess the psychometric properties of the new instrument. The FS II(R) has both a long (43-item) and a short (14-item) version. The long version has a total score derived from a one factor solution and a two factor solution consisting of General Health and Stage Specific factors for each age group. The 14-item version of FS II(R) uses a common core of items across the entire age span. Internal consistency estimates (alphas) for the factor-based and 14-item versions are all greater than 0.80. At each age, long and short versions behave similarly in a wide range of tests of discriminant, construct, and content validity--strong support that they constitute a common measure. The FS II(R) has excellent psychometric properties and provides concise measures of health status of children spanning the entire childhood age range from 0 to 16 years. It has particular strengths for the measurement of health status of children with chronic physical conditions who are not disabled.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Activities of Daily Living
  • Adolescent
  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • Chronic Disease
  • Demography
  • Factor Analysis, Statistical
  • Female
  • Health Status Indicators*
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Infant, Newborn
  • Male
  • New York City
  • Psychometrics
  • Sampling Studies
  • Surveys and Questionnaires