Emotional health among young children with special needs and typical children: A psychometric study of measures of attachment, interaction, mastery and social support using confirmatory factor analysis [electronic resource]
The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to investigate the psychometric properties of a clinical, parent report instrument, the <italic>AIMS</italic>: <italic>Indicators of Emotional Health</italic>, and (2) to come to a better understanding of the structure of emotional health in typical children as well as in those with special needs
Psychometric study of the AIMS instrument included both examination of internal consistency (reliability) of items on the AIMS scale, and examination of the instrument's factor structure by applying confirmatory factor analysis to data from typically developing two, three, and four year olds. A well-functioning set of items was identified at each age. When twenty items were selected at each age, the overall scale met criteria for screening among early childhood assessment instruments. Multifactor confirmatory factor analyses did not support the hypothesized four-factor structure of the instrument—attachment, interaction, mastery, social support—at any of the three ages tested. But, the four-factor model did perform better than a single factor model at each age, and factor-factor correlations indicated a similar pattern at all ages
Between-group differences were examined using single factor models for each of the AIMS factors at each age. Social support items tended to evidence common indicator-factor correlations between-groups. A subset of items for attachment, interaction, and mastery also showed similarities. However, average scores were predominantly higher for the special needs group on the various scales at each age, and indicator-factor correlations were substantially different for approximately half of all scale items
Psychometrically, the AIMS exhibited satisfactory levels of reliability as a screening for emotional health, but the four-factor structure of the instrument was not sufficiently supported for the purposes of identifying specific concerns. However, between-group analysis showed that the instrument provides a diverse and richly-textured picture of the emotional life of a child within a family. These findings describe a clinical tool whose purpose is not the diagnosis of singular conditions but, rather, serves the dual purpose of gathering data and establishing a dialog about concerns of particular meaning to a family
