Validity, reliability, and feasibility of the Brief School Needs Inventory: Evaluating educational risk for students with chronic health conditions

OBJECTIVE: Researchers have increasingly emphasized the need to include routine educational and cognitive screening in the care plan for youth with chronic health conditions. Prior to now, a screener did not exist to asses risk/need in education in the pediatric setting; thus, this research aimed to examine the validity, reliability, and feasibility of the newly developed Brief School Needs Inventory (BSNI), which stratifies a patients level of educational risk/need in the context of a health condition. METHODS: The authors developed and pilot-tested two versions of an education risk screener utilizing a mixed-methods design, which included an expert panel review process and assessments for validity, reliability, and feasibility. RESULTS: Ninety-eight school-age survivors of an oncologic disease were assessed for educational risk. Participants were assigned to two groups and administered either the initial (n = 48) or revised (n = 50) version of the screener. The final version of the screener, the BSNI, predicted educational risk in congruence with school liaisons perceived risk assessment with 94% accuracy. Liaisons also reported confidence in the results of 98% of cases for the BSNI. Similarly, expert panel results for the BSNI indicated a high degree of interrater agreement and content validity. CONCLUSIONS: The BSNI was found to be a valid and reliable screener for predicting educational risk for youth with oncologic conditions; future studies will examine use of the screener within other pediatric chronic populations.