Responsiveness of Life Participation for Parents (LPP^®): A Tool for Family-Centered Rehabilitation

Aims:The Life Participation for Parents (LPP^®) is a Quality of Life assessment designed to measure family-centered practice outcomes. Previous studies of the LPP have established its internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha =.85), test–retest reliability (r =.89), construct validity, and concurrent validity. This study examined the responsiveness of the LPP, hypothesizing change scores after 3 months of intervention would exceed that explained by standard error. Methods: Thirty-two parents of children with disabilities completed the LPP to identify family-centered issues. The LPP was completed a second time after 3 months of intervention. Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was used to compare the median differences between two administrations. Minimal clinically important differences (MCID) were calculated for the total and two LPP subscales (efficiency and effectiveness). Cohen’s effect size was calculated using the standardized response mean (SRM) to quantify the change. Results: The age range of the parents was 31–50 (72%), including 31 mothers (96.9%). Median differences between the two administrations were significantly different (p <.05). The MCID were 11.34, 9.82, and 4.48; the SRM were 0.42, 0.54, and 0.04, for the LPP total score, efficiency subscale and effectiveness subscale, respectively. Conclusions: The LPP is responsive to detect a change larger than measurement error in parental ability of participating in life occupations while raising a child with disabilities.