Development and Validation of Screening Tool for Noncompliance in Young Children

A screening tool ‘Noncompliance in Children’ was developed and validated to measure noncompliance in children of ages 6-10 years. This was part of a study that aims to explore parental and teacher perceptions and responses to noncompliance. The tool was developed due to the absence of a validated tool that exclusively measured noncompliance. 10 behaviours were arrived at for parallel parent and teacher versions from extensive literature review. Validation was carried out to establish validity and reliability. 6 subject matter experts were consulted for each form. Items were reduced and modified based on feedback. Content validity index (CVI) for each form was calculated using the Lawshe method. The parent and teacher forms received CVI scores of 0.78 and 0.75 respectively. The extended Angoff method was used to arrive at cut-off scores that would indicate the presence of noncompliance. The modified parent form of 6 items was administered to 30 parents, and the teacher form of 4 items was administered to 20 parents to ascertain reliability. 1 item from the parent form was deleted as many respondents endorsed a score of 0 on it. Cronbach alpha coefficients of 0.83 and 0.72 were found for the parent and teacher forms respectively. The CVI for the parent form was recalculated upon the removal of 1 item and was found to be 0.74. This screening tool has demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties for use in the next phase of the study.