Cultural validity of the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment/Preferences for Activities of Children (CAPE/PAC)

Objective: The aim was to evaluate whether the activity items of the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment/Preferences for Activities of Children (CAPE/PAC) were relevant for Swedish children. Subjects: A total of 337 typically developed children aged 6-17 years old. Methods: The CAPE/PAC was translated into Swedish in accordance with accepted translation procedures. By means of 14 group interviews with children with and without disabilities aged 6-15 years old and parents, available leisure activities were listed. These were matched to the items in the CAPE/PAC. Sixteen new potential activities were added and tested on 337 typical developed children from different regions of Sweden. A cutoff level of activities performed by >10% was set to identify relevant activities. Differences between the original and a proposed Swedish version were analysed using paired-samples t-tests of standardized mean scores. Results: Three new activity items were included, for 10 items new activity examples were added, and three not relevant items were excluded. In the Swedish version the outcome of standardized mean diversity score was significantly higher compared with the outcome of the original version. Conclusions: When using instruments in new contexts, it is not enough simply to translate; validation of the item relevance to the new context is essential.