Development and Validation of a Self-management Skills Assessment Tool for Children With Inflammatory Bowel Disease: The Inflammatory Bowel Disease-Skills Tasks and Abilities Record (IBD-STAR)

Abstract

Objectives: For children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the development of self-management skills has the potential to improve disease outcomes. No assessment tools are aimed at measuring self-management skills in this population. A tool was developed called the IBD-Skills Tasks and Abilities Record (IBD-STAR) which measures children's allocation of responsibility for specific skills. IBD-STAR contains 18 items, scored whether completed independently (score 2), with help (score 1) or not at all (score 0).

Methods: Children with IBD completed IBD-STAR; one parent and a gastroenterologist completed a series of visual analogue scales that corresponded with each IBD-STAR section. Children's IBD-STAR scores were examined against independent variables and compared with the parent and clinician visual analogue scale scores. Reliability was calculated using Cronbach's alpha.

Results: Twenty-five Cronbach's alpha with IBD participated, mean age 14 years (standard deviation (SD) 1.7), 14 (56%) were boys, and 21 (84%) had Crohn's disease. The mean IBD-STAR score was 27.1 (SD 5.7), equivalent to a score of 75%. Age was the only independent variable significantly associated with scores (P = 0.017). Parents consistently underestimated their children in all sections, but clinician assessments were more closely aligned. Reliability for IBD-STAR was good with an overall Cronbach's alpha of 0.84.

Conclusion: IBD-STAR reports the allocation of responsibility for self-management skills with good agreement between children and clinician, and with comprehensible differences with their parents. Such a tool may be used to identify children with IBD in need of support or to measure the efficacy of targeted interventions.