Validity and reliability of Activities Scale for Kids (ASK) in children with cerebral palsy

The aim of this study was to translate "Activities Scale for Kids" (ASK) into Farsi and to determine its validity in children with cerebral palsy. In a methodological study, ASK was first translated into Farsi and then its validity and reliability was determined through a four-stage procedure. The first two phases of this four-stage procedure included cloudy translation into Farsi and back translation into English. In the third phase of this study, the validity of this test was determined through conducting a pilot study in which a group of professionals and also parents with children diagnosed as having CP rated the test. Finally, it was provided to two groups of parents (a group with children with CP and another group with children without any problems). Children with CP were recruited from the affiliated occupational therapy clinics of The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Science and normal children were sampled from general population via a snowball procedure. 73 children with cerebral palsy and 69 normal children (5-15 years old) were participated in the study. Reliability (internal consistency and test-retest within a 2-week interval) and validity (content on basis of Lawasche's method, concurrent with GMFCS-E&R and discriminate) of ASK were analyzed using SPSS 13 software. Content validity index demonstrated a high content validity (0.79 for university professors and 0.86 for parents). ASK and GMFCS- E&R (-0.901) strongly negatively correlated as it was shown by Spearman's correlation coefficiency. Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbakh's alpha and the result was 0.997. Line regression in CP and normal groups demonstrated significant statistic variation and this indicated a sophisticated discriminate validity of Farsi version of ASK. Test-retest reliability of ASK was 0.998. Farsi version of ASK has acceptable validity and reliability rates and it may be used for clinical as well as research purposes.