Short form scale of parent self-efficacy for general and specialized care for children with special health care needs.

Authors

Carolyn Foster, Leonardo Barrera, Aaron Kaat, David Cella, Courtney Blackwell, Matthew Davis, Ryan Coller, Marie Heffernan

Published in

Journal of patient-reported outcomes. Jul 14, 2026. Epub Jul 14, 2026.

Abstract

Self-efficacy in managing healthcare tasks has been shown to predict health behaviors and outcomes. Previous research has established the content validity of a full-length 30-item survey scale to assess the level of parents' self-efficacy when managing their children's healthcare tasks. The goal of this work was to create an efficient and psychometrically strong short form version to aid research and clinical practice.
We conducted scale construction using national cross-sectional survey data of English- and Spanish-speaking parents of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) 0-17 years old (9/2023-12/2023). Self-efficacy was assessed with a 5-point confidence scale [1 (not confident) to 5 (very confident)]. The sample was randomly evenly split into derivation and validation samples. Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were performed for the general (14-item), equipment (8-item), and medication care (6-item) long form subscales, but not the therapy and mobility care long form subscales, which were only 1-item long. Spearman correlations were used to assess convergent and divergent validity. Means and standard deviations (SD) were calculated for item scoring.
1,132 respondents participated (54% Non-Hispanic White; 68% mothers). Derivation and validation samples were n = 566 each. The EFAs revealed single-factor structures for general care items (Cronbach's alpha 0.95); medication care items (Cronbach's alpha 0.91); and equipment care items (Cronbach's alpha 0.85). CFA results confirmed EFA results, with 5 items for general care (Cronbach's alpha 0.87), 3 items for medication care (Cronbach's alpha 0.76), and 3 items for equipment care (Cronbach's alpha 0.77). The mean scores of the new short form subscales were 4.36 (SD = 0.73), 4.41 (SD = 0.77), and 4.19 (SD = 0.86) for general, medication, and equipment care, respectively.
This 13-item short form scale (5 general care, 3 equipment care, 3 medication care, 1 therapy care, and 1 mobility care sub-scales items) is an efficient, self-administered means of assessing parents of CYSHCN's self-efficacy with managing their child's healthcare. Future work will test the scale's feasibility and utility at identifying parents who may benefit from additional support and training.

PMID:
42446815
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Jul 2026.

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