The Psychosocial Assessment Tool

Description of Measure:

• Developed in 2001 (v.1); 2008 (v.2)
• Designed for use with families of children newly diagnosed with cancer. Parents or caregivers complete the measure.
• 15 response sets (but some have many (12) sub-questions)
• Time-frame to complete is 10 minutes
• Purpose: to assess psychosocial risk in families of children newly diagnosed with cancer
• Response format(s): Yes/No, Likert ratings, fill-in-the-blank questions, checkboxes
• Item example: “Who can you count on to provide the following: childcare/parenting, emotional support, financial support, information, help with everyday tasks?”
• Subscales: Family Structure and Resources, Family Social Support, Family Problems, Parent Stress Reactions, Family Beliefs, Child Problems, Sibling Problems. Sample items include “Tell us who lives in the child’s home” (Family Structure), “Tell us about who helps out with the child’s care” (Social Support), “At any times during the child’s illness have you lost interest in being with family and friends, or doing regular activities as a result of the illness?” (Stress Reactions), and “As a caregiver for the child, how much do you believe the doctors and nurses will know how to help?” (Family Beliefs).
• Languages: Spanish and other languages
• Reliability and validity: alpha =.81; test re-test reliability over 2-week period rs=.78-.87. Scores correlated with acute stress and child behavior symptoms as reported by both mothers and fathers.
• Content validity: significant correlations of Child Problems with BASC-2 Behavioral Symptoms Index; Total scores correlate highly with measures of distress and poorer family functioning.
• Important normative samples: Psychometric properties were originally established on a sample of 132 female and 72 male caregivers of 141 children newly-diagnosed with cancer.
• Other versions: Staff PAT for parallel assessment of psychosocial risk by patient, oncologist and/or nurse — 17 items.

To obtain the instrument: Stephen DiDonato, MS, Center for Pediatric Traumatic Stress, Nemours/AI DuPont Hospital for Children, PsychosocialAssessmentTool@nemours.org.

References

Alderfer, M.A., Mougianis, I., Barakat, L.P., Beele, D., DiTaranto, S., Hwang, W-T., Rielly, A.T. & Kazak, A.E. (2009). Family psychosocial risk, distress, and service utilization in pediatric cancer: predictive validity of the Psychosocial Assessment Tool (PAT). Cancer, 115(8), S4339-49.

Kazak, A. E., Schneider, S., Didonato, S., & Pai, A. L. H. (2015). Family psychosocial risk screening guided by the Pediatric Psychosocial Preventative Health Model (PPPHM) using the Psychosocial Assessment Tool (PAT). Acta Oncologica, 54(5), 574-580. doi: 10.3109/0284186X.2014.995774

Pai, A.L., Patino-Fernandez, A.M., McSherry, M., Beele, D., Alderfer, M.A., Reilly, A.T., Hwang, W-T., & Kazak, A.E. (2008). The psychosocial assessment tool (PAT2.0): Psychometric properties of a screener for psychosocial distress in families of children newly-diagnosed with cancer. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 33, 50-62.