PRELIMINARY VALIDATION OF A PARENTAL ADJUSTMENT MEASURE FOR USE WITH FAMILIES OF DISABLED-CHILDREN IN RURAL INDIA

Parental adjustment is an important outcome in child disability interv entions, as well as an important mediating variable for other child an d family outcomes. This is just as true in developing countries using models of community-based rehabilitation. Previous experience with Wes tern instruments indicated that an appropriate new measure was require d. A questionnaire containing 34 attitude statements rated on a five p oint scale was administered to the mothers of 46 children with epileps y in a treatment programme in rural West Bengal, India. Factor analysi s was performed on the dataset. Mothers reported feelings of rejection , low self-esteem and guilt. Four domains were derived from the factor analysis. All these attitudes are consistent with previous Indian stu dies on childhood disability. These preliminary findings have implicat ions for social support and counselling intervention. Further research is necessary to validate this instrument for field studies of interve ntion.