Importance: The impact of sensory processing challenges on occupational participation is underrepresented by existing measurement tools even though these outcomes are highly prioritized by families. The Participation and Sensory Environment Questionnaire-Home Scale (PSEQ-H) is a parent-report assessment designed to evaluate the impact of the sensory environment on young children's participation in home-based activities.
Objective: To describe the psychometric evaluation of the PSEQ-H, including the tool's structural validity; item difficulty, discrimination, and bias; reliability; and construct validity.
Design: Psychometric field study.
Setting: Community.
Participants: Three hundred four parents of children ages 2-7 yr (167 parents of children with autism spectrum disorder).
Method: Parent-report PSEQ-H data were factor analyzed, calibrated using Item Response Theory, and evaluated for construct validity.
Results: The final PSEQ-H is a reliable and valid 15-item parent-report measure of the sensory environment's impact on children's dressing, self-care, sleep, and social and play activities.
Conclusions and relevance: The PSEQ-H can be used to plan and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions for reducing the impact of the sensory environment on children's participation in home-based tasks and activities.
What this article adds: The PSEQ-H measures how young children's sensory environments influence their participation at home. The measure can be used to plan and evaluate occupational therapy interventions that aim to reduce sensory processing-related barriers to children's completion of developmentally salient activities.
Copyright © 2020 by the American Occupational Therapy Association, Inc.