Empowerment Assessment tools in People with Disabilities in Developing Countries. A systematicliterature review

摘要

Introduction: Many initiatives are undertaken to improve the empowerment ofpeople with disabilities in developing countries. However, an overview of adequatemeasurement tools to evaluate such activities is not available to date. This systematicliterature review aims to describe and assess the available tools to measureempowerment in people with disability, suitable for use in developing countries.Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted. Articles were eligible whenthey described the development, validation, translation or the use of an instrumentmeasuring empowerment in the context of disability. The instruments were assessed ontheir psychometric properties and on equivalence properties when they were translated.Results: Thirty-six articles were found in which 17 questionnaires were developed,validated, translated or used. The questionnaires varied in the construct ofempowerment, the target population and the psychometric properties. None of thequestionnaires were developed or validated in a developing country. Thepsychometric properties and equivalence criteria were not adequately describedand measured in any article. The Empowerment Scale (ES) of Rogers was the mostoften validated, translated and used questionnaire, receiving the highest number ofpositive ratings for the psychometric properties.Discussion/Conclusion: The ES is the tool most widely used to measure empower-ment, but adequate validation in a developing country context is still lacking.Cultural validity should be assessed in any culture before it is used. Further researchis needed to develop empowerment instruments for developing countries and to assessthe equivalence criteria, including psychometric properties of such questionnaires