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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fped.2025.1522475
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinical Trials: Design, Methods, and Analysis View all 7 articles

Wheelchair Use Confidence Scale for Arab Pediatric Manual Wheelchair Users: Preliminary Evaluation of its Measurement Properties

Provisionally accepted
Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak 1*Paula W. Rushton Paula W. Rushton 2
  • 1 Occupational Therapy Program, Batterjee Medical College, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
  • 2 Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study translated the pediatric Wheelchair Use Confidence Scale for Manual Wheelchair Users (WheelCon-M-P) into Arabic (WheelCon-M-A-P) and evaluated whether the translation produced scores similar to the original English version. The English version was first translated into Arabic and then verified by back translation method by expert committee in the field of rehabilitation and wheelchair service provision. The final versions were administered to assess confidence with manual wheelchair use among children. Each participant was asked to complete both the WheelCon-M-P English version and the WheelCon-M-A-P Arabic version in a random sequence. Kappa statistics were used to quantify the level of agreement between scores obtained from both versions. Participants (n=48) had an average age of 14.2 years, were all bilingual, and 54% were male. Kappa agreement obtained was 0.54 (95% confidence interval, 0.49-0.62) indicating significant moderate agreement between the two versions (p<0.000). This study provides preliminary evidence of a valid WheelCon-M-A-P to assess confidence with manual wheelchair use among Arabic-speaking children. Future studies to further test its psychometric properties are crucial.

    Keywords: Children, confidence, manual wheelchair user, self-report, Wheelchair service provision

    Received: 12 Nov 2024; Accepted: 30 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Sarsak and Rushton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak, Occupational Therapy Program, Batterjee Medical College, Jeddah, 21442, Saudi Arabia

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