2023 Volume 26 Issue 1 Pages 41-49
Objective: This research aims to develop an evaluation scale to assess the disaster preparedness of families with children with developmental disabilities to enhance disaster resilience, as well as to examine reliability and validity of the scale.
Methods: Items were collected and selected from previous studies, and a 26-item scale was created based on the conceptual framework of disaster resilience. Anonymous self-administered questionnaires were mailed to 453 parents of children with developmental disabilities (including presumed diagnosis) aged 6–18 years. The parents were from 21 parents’ association of children with developmental disabilities throughout Japan.
Result: A total of 172 valid surveys (36.1% of the original) were analyzed. The average age of the children was 12.48±3.13 years. In item analysis, two items were excluded. Exploratory factor analysis identified three subscales among 22 items: sharing risk within family or community, mitigating risk of living, and preparing necessary items. The scale had an overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .923, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the three subscales ranged from .814 to .900. The scale had a significant moderate correlation with the self-assessment of disaster preparedness (ρ = .625).
Discussions: The Disaster Preparedness Scale for Families of Children with Developmental Disabilities satisfied good internal consistency, and construct validity, and criteria-related validity. This study suggests that the scale can be used to self-evaluate disaster preparedness for families of children with developmental disabilities.
