The proposed work builds upon previous experience of the investigators in developing a similar health status instrument for adolescents aged 11-17, the Child Health and Illness Profile-Adolescent Edition (CHIP-AE). Versions for both child and parent respondents will be developed and tested in three phases, using three geographic locations with children and families from varying socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Phase I will be the development and testing of draft instruments: a parent edition will be self-administered to a total of 30 parents; the child version will be tested on 80 children from schools in the Baltimore school system. Children will be chosen who represent Hispanic, African American, and White racial/ethnic backgrounds. An interviewer-administered version will be developed for children ages 5 to 7 and a self-administered form will be developed for children ages 8 to 11 (who have good reading comprehension). Both of the child instruments will use pictorial representations for items. Phase II will involve field testing, refining the instruments, and developing the procedural methods for subject recruitment, survey administration and data management. A group of 220 parent-child pairs at the Baltimore Prudential Healthcare Plan will complete the instrument. The instruments will be revised and procedural methods modified before additional field testing occurs. Phase III tests the revised instruments on a broad range of parents and children with different sociodemographic, racial, and geographic characteristics. Children will be selected from health plan lists at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, and United Health Plan of New England in Providence, Rhode Island, whereas school lists will be used in Baltimore. Initially, 220 parent-child pairs from each of the Oakland and Providence sites will complete home interviews. Subsequently, the instruments will be administered in Baltimore schools to children and through the mail to their parents using methods that are likely to be employed in community based surveys. The Phase III field test will establish the reliability, validity, and feasibility of administering the instrument.
