Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the Eating and Drinking Ability Classication System in Children with Cerebral Palsy in Iran

Human need for food is one of the inherent or physiological needs that, along with the ability to eat and drink, is the most important factor of health, survival and longevity. Children with cerebral palsy suffer from severe maladjustment in the nutritional mechanism and the creation of unsafe, even risky, conditions for life, due to deficiencies in the disease. Because of the importance of Eating and Drinking Ability Classification System (EDACS) in the research and treatment of children with cerebral palsy, the purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Persian version of this system.
After the forward and backward translation procedures and investigation of face and content validity, test–retest reliability was assessed between parents and therapists using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). 130 Children (3 to 20 years, mean age 52.35 months and standard deviation 33.96; 73 boys, 57 girls) with various types of CP were classified according to EDACS by both parents and therapists.
The test–retest reliability was high and significant; the ICC related to parents and occupational therapists was 0.98, and the ICC related to speech therapists (0.99) was higher than 0.90 that both of them showed high correlation.
The Persian version of the EDACS is found to be valid and reliable, and is suggested to be appropriate for the assessment of eating and drinking ability in children with cerebral palsy.