Treatment Beliefs of Children and Adolescents With Chronic Diseases: Development of the Rehabilitation Treatment Beliefs Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents.

Publisher: Oxford University Press Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 7801773 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1465-735X (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 01468693 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Pediatr Psychol Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 1998- : Cary, NC : Oxford University Press
Original Publication: Washington, Society of Pediatric Psychology.

Surveys and Questionnaires*; Humans ; Child ; Female ; Adolescent ; Male ; Treatment Outcome ; Chronic Disease ; Psychometrics/methods ; Reproducibility of Results

Objective: Rehabilitation is an important component in the health care of children and adolescents with chronic diseases and aims at supporting patients' self-regulation for dealing with the disease. Patients' beliefs about illness and treatment are core elements in the self-regulation process. While questionnaires measuring illness beliefs for children and adolescents exist, questionnaires about their rehabilitation-related treatment beliefs are lacking. We therefore developed a questionnaire to assess the rehabilitation-related treatment beliefs of children and adolescents with chronic diseases (Rehabilitation Treatment Beliefs Questionnaire, RTBQ) and tested its psychometric properties.
Methods: Ahead of their rehabilitation, children and adolescents, aged 12-17 years, answered 129 items, which were developed based on previous qualitative findings exploring children and adolescents' rehabilitation-related treatment beliefs. Psychometric testing included item analyses, exploratory factor analysis, internal consistency and bivariate correlations of the extracted scales, and the discriminatory power and difficulty of the final items.
Results: The sample consisted of 170 participants with a mean age of 14.3 years (SD = 1.6); 53.5% were female. After item analyses, 47 items remained for the exploratory factor analysis which revealed 22 items allocated to 4 scales: "expectations of communication and interaction," "expectations of the treatment process," "expectations of treatment success and sustainability," and "expectations of one's own role in the rehabilitation process." The psychometric properties were acceptable to good.
Conclusions: The RTBQ assesses various dimensions of rehabilitation-related treatment beliefs of children and adolescents with chronic diseases. While first psychometric results are promising, further psychometric testing is needed.
(© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Comment in: J Pediatr Psychol. 2022 Aug 23;:. (PMID: 35997553)

Keywords: adolescents; children; chronic diseases; questionnaire; rehabilitation; self-regulation; treatment beliefs

Date Created: 20220415 Date Completed: 20230116 Latest Revision: 20230210

20240628

10.1093/jpepsy/jsac033

35426935