The development of checklists and reference charts for activities of daily living of normal developing children

Aim: To measure the performance in activities of daily living and obtain reference charts in normal developing children. Method: This is a cross-sectional survey study. We identified relevant items suitable to describe a wide range of daily life activities and set up a self-administered questionnaire. An initial set of items underwent a correlation analysis integrated with clinical judgment, to remove those items providing limited additional information. Factor analysis was used to identify latent variables, enabling the grouping of selected items into specific skill-related areas. For each latent variable, a model was developed to represent the progression of performance in activities of daily living as the child advanced in age. Results: We collected data related to 3079 children, 1478 females and 1601 males, of median (IQR) 10.7 (7.2) years of age. The initial 268-item set was reduced to 154-item related to 14 domains and gathered into 30 latent variables. Interpretation: The results describe the age-related performance in activities of daily living and produce reference values associated to an Italian population of normal children less than 18 years of age.