Psychometric properties of MyCommunication-Children: an item bank for measuring communicative participation in children with speech, language, voice disorders or hearing loss

BACKGROUND: Communicative participation is the most important outcome of speech and language therapy. However, there are no instruments to measure communicative participation in children. This paper focuses on assessing the psychometric properties of MyCommunication-Children, an item bank designed to measure communicative participation in children with speech, language, or voice disorders, as well as hearing loss.

METHODOLOGY: A total of 310 children with communication difficulties participated in the study. They completed the full item pool of 49 items, along with three comparator questionnaires: the PROMIS® Pediatric Peer Relationships and two single items measuring communication and communicative participation. Psychometric evaluation focused on structural validity, construct validity, and reliability.

RESULTS: Seventeen of the 49 items were removed through systematic item reduction. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and bifactor modeling supported sufficient unidimensionality, indicating that communicative participation can be reliably measured as a single construct. Moderate correlations with related constructs (e.g., communication, communicative participation, and peer relationships) further supported the construct validity of MyCommunication-Children. Two short forms were developed for different purposes: a 10-item version measuring communicative participation across all contexts, and a 9-item version measuring communicative participation within the school context. Reliability analyses showed high reliability for the full item bank and sufficient reliability for both short forms.

CONCLUSION: The results provide sufficient evidence to support the validity and reliability of the MyCommunication-Children instrument for measuring communicative participation from the perspective of children with communication difficulties.