Publication Alert: Culturally Adapting Assessments for Participation-focused Pediatric Practice

Our CPERL team has continued our anti-racist journey this summer by contributing to a publication that focuses on diversifying our assessments to make them more accessible for families. Our lab members Mary, Vivian, and Christina collaborated with Dana, Rachel, Roopa, Vrushali, and Vanessa to this article, titled A guiding process for culturally adapting assessments for participation-focused pediatric practice: The case of the Participation and Environment Measures (PEM). The article's purpose is to discuss how pediatric participation measures can be adapted to meet certain cultural needs, and how it can encourage other rehabilitation professionals and researchers to follow a similar approach.

This work, however, has also made us carefully reflect on what requests can and cannot not be modified to meet a culture's need. The aesthetic of an assessment, such as its color for example, may symbolize various meanings across cultures and may appeal differently. Moving forward, we hope to use what we have learned from this experience to critically analyze what components are important to consider when culturally adapting measurements.