Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2015 November, 237(3)

Validity of the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT), a Newly Developed Scale for Children with Disabilities

AIKO KOHARA,¹ CHANGWAN HAN,² HAEJIN KWON³ and MASAHIRO KOHZUKI¹

¹Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
²Department of Special Needs Education, Faculty of Education, University of the Ryukyus, Nakagami-gun, Okinawa, Japan
³Major in Economics, Graduate School of Economics, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Shiga, Japan

The improvement of the quality of life (QOL) of children with disabilities has been considered important. Therefore, the Special Needs Education Assessment Tool (SNEAT) was developed based on the concept of QOL to objectively evaluate the educational outcome of children with disabilities. SNEAT consists of 11 items in three domains: physical functioning, mental health, and social functioning. This study aimed to verify the reliability and construct validity of SNEAT using 93 children collected from the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities in Okinawa Prefecture between October and November 2014. Survey data were collected in a longitudinal prospective cohort study. The reliability of SNEAT was verified via the internal consistency method and the test-pretest method; both the coefficient of Cronbach's α and the intra-class correlation coefficient were over 0.7. The validity of SNEAT was also verified via one-way repeated-measures ANOVA and the latent growth curve model. The scores of all the items and domains and the total scores obtained from one-way repeated-measures ANOVA were the same as the predicted scores. SNEAT is valid based on its goodness-of-fit values obtained using the latent growth curve model, where the values of comparative fit index (0.983) and root mean square error of approximation (0.062) were within the goodness-of-fit range. These results indicate that SNEAT has high reliability and construct validity and may contribute to improve QOL of children with disabilities in the classes on independent activities of daily living for children with disabilities.

keywords —— development of scale; QOL; reliability; Special Needs Education Assessment Tool; structural equation modeling

© 2015 Tohoku University Medical Press

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Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 2015, 237, 241-248

Correspondence: Masahiro Kohzuki, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8574, Japan.

e-mail: kohzuki@med.tohoku.ac.jp