PARENTS‘ PERCEPTIONS OF CAREGIVING: DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MEASURE OF PROCESSES

The authors describe the development of a 56-item questionnaire, the Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC-56), designed to find out what parents of a child with a chronic health problem think of the services they and their child receive and of how those services affect psychosocial outcome. The instrument is internally consistent and is reliable on retests. Its validity was shown by positive correlations of its five scales with parents' satisfaction, and negative correlations with parents' stress in relation to services received. The MPOC-56 is a generic measure which can be used for clinical, quality assurance and research purposes.