Assessment of knowledge and autonomy for the transition from adolescent toward adult care

Abstract

In the last decades more and more children survive with complex health conditions, requiring a transition from pediatric to adult care. It is essential to have instruments that provide information on the level of preparation of patients for this process.

Objective: To create and validate a questionnaire to measure the readiness status of adolescent patients with chronic diseases in the transition process.

Patients and Method: Based on international questionnaires, a self-report instrument was designed which was subjected to content validity by experts, and then to comprehension and feasibility tests in a pilot group. Subsequently, construct and reliability validation were performed through a factorial analysis after applied it to adolescents living with a chronic illness.

Results: After the analysis made by 11 experts and the pilot group with 8 patients, we obtained an instrument that was fully answered by 168 teenagers (Average age 14.4 years). After construct validation, a 24-items instrument of high clinical relevance was developed, with 9 items with acceptable psychometric properties, which were highlighted in the final questionnaire.

Conclusion: a self-report instrument aimed to measure the readiness of adolescents during the transition process to adult care is presented. The reported psychometric properties of the instrument were insufficient to consider it validated since the construct validity and reliability were only checked for 9 of the 24 items.