Translating and validating the Child HCAHPS survey in Japan: A single-center cross-sectional study

Abstract Purpose: The Child Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (Child HCAHPS) assesses the experiences of pediatric patients and their parents or guardians with inpatient care. This study aimed to develop a Japanese version of the Child HCAHPS and to examine its validity and reliability. Methods: A draft Japanese version of the Child HCAHPS was produced in a conceptually equivalent and culturally appropriate manner. Using the draft Japanese version, the survey was administered using a push-to-web method to eligible parents/guardians of children (aged 0–17 years) discharged from a tertiary children’s hospital in Osaka, Japan in December 2021 through March 2022. Construct validity and internal consistency reliability were tested. Results: Of 1,300 eligible candidates to whom survey invitations were mailed, 460 returned complete surveys (response rate 35%). The validity of a composite “Involving teens in their care” remained unproven. With the remaining composites, however, confirmatory factor analysis showed fair goodness of fit of the same factor structure as that of the original Child HCAHPS (the comparative fit index = 0.92, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.90, and root mean square error of approximation = 0.052). The Cronbach coefficient was close to or above 0.7 for most of the items indicating a good reliability. Conclusions: The Japanese Child HCAHPS demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties for assessing patient and family experiences in a Japanese tertiary children’s hospital. However, several items and composites with suboptimal properties warrant further validation in future multicenter surveys.