Adapting the Parent Report of Children’s Abilities-Revised (PARCA-R) questionnaire: Improving research inclusion and access to healthcare services for families with limited English literacy

Why this is important: It is important to check children’s development early in life so that they can get the help they need at the right time. Checking development is also important for research, to help find treatments that are useful and safe for children. The PARCA-R is used a lot to check children’s development in healthcare services and research. However, because it was developed in English, parents who don’t speak or read English well, or at all, cannot use it. This means children’s development may not be checked, or families may not be able to take part in research in which the PARCA-R is used. To be able to include more families, we want to make the PARCA-R questionnaire easier to use and translate it into Polish, Romanian, Urdu, Arabic, and Punjabi, languages lots of
people speak in the UK.

How we will do it: First, we will adapt the PARCA-R questions that ask about children’s language skills. This is important because children learn words at different ages in different languages. We will use information about how children learn words in Polish, Romanian, Urdu, Arabic, and Panjabi to make sure the questionnaire will measure children’s development equally across the five languages. Second, we will translate the whole questionnaire into the five new languages using a mix of expert translators and artificial intelligence. The translations will be tested by parents to ensure they are easy to use and understand. Third, we will make online versions of the questionnaire in each language. Importantly, this will include spoken versions, including in English, so that parents who are not able to read well in their own language can still complete the questionnaire.

Working with parents: We have planned this project with parents and healthcare professionals. One member of our team leads a charity that supports parents of young children. Throughout the project, parents will test the translations and the online and spoken versions to make sure they are understandable and easy to use.