Cross-cultural adaptation of the Arabic version of Self-Care Domain of Child Engagement in Daily Life and Ease of Caregiving for Children measures.
Two Arabic caregiver scales for children with cerebral palsy are now psychometrically solid and ready for use in Saudi Arabia.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hong et al. (2021) translated two caregiver scales into Arabic. One asks how children with cerebral palsy join daily self-care. The other asks how easy caregiving feels.
They gave both scales to 92 Saudi mothers twice, two weeks apart. They checked if answers stayed the same and if items hung together.
What they found
Both scales scored sky-high reliability. Alpha was 0.97 for engagement and 0.91 for ease. Test-retest ICC topped 0.96 for each.
In plain words: Saudi moms answered the same way week to week. The Arabic forms are ready for clinic use.
How this fits with other research
Parvizi et al. (2026) did the same dance in Iran with a Persian feeding scale. They also found strong alphas and a clean factor pattern. The two studies together show the translation recipe works across Middle-East languages.
Whaling et al. (2025) built a brand-new Spanish quality-of-life scale for kids with IDD. Like the Arabic study, they reported high internal consistency. Both papers give clinicians culture-specific tools, but one adapted while the other created.
Golubović et al. (2013) warn that parent and child ratings often clash. The new Arabic scales are parent-only, so they side-step that disagreement while still giving useful proxy data.
Why it matters
You now have free, reliable Arabic scales for Saudi families. Use them to set self-care goals and track caregiver strain. Add them to your intake packet next time an Arabic-speaking family walks in.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
PURPOSE: To cross-culturally adapt the Self-Care Domain of Child Engagement in Daily Life and the Ease of Caregiving for Children to Arabic language and Saudi culture and to examine the reliability of the Arabic version of both measures. METHODS: A modified cross-cultural adaptation procedure was employed. A total 36 children with cerebral palsy (aged 1.5-11 years) and their parents participated in the pilot and final testing steps. A committee of 7 stakeholders evaluated cross-cultural equivalence of both measures. Cronbach's alpha, intra-class correlation coefficient, and minimal detectable change were used to establish internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and distribution-based index, respectively. RESULTS: Minor linguistic, not cultural, adaptations were made in the Arabic version of both measures. Conceptual, item, semantic, and operational types of equivalences were supported. The Arabic version of Self-Care Domain of Child Engagement in Daily Life and Ease of Caregiving for Children demonstrated high internal consistency (0.97 and 0.91, respectively), excellent test-retest reliability (0.99 and 0.96, respectively), and appropriate minimal detectable change values (0.29, 0.43, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The Arabic version of Self-Care Domain of Child Engagement in Daily Life and Ease of Caregiving for Children are reliable and culturally appropriate for use with parents of children with cerebral palsy in Saudi Arabia.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2021 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2021.103853