The Montreal Children's Hospital Feeding Scale: A brief bilingual screening tool for identifying feeding problems

M Ramsay, C Martel, M Porporino, C Zygmuntowicz. The Montreal Children's Hospital Feeding Scale: A brief bilingual screening tool for identifying feeding problems. Paediatr Child Health 2011;16(3):147-151. OBJECTIVE: To establish the psychometric characteristics of a newly developed, brief bilingual 14-item parent report tool (The Montreal Children's Hospital Feeding Scale [MCH-Feeding Scale]) designed to identify feeding problems in children six months to six years of age. METHODS: To establish construct validity, 198 mothers of children visiting community paediatrician's offices (normative sample) and 174 mothers of children referred to a feeding clinic (clinical sample) completed the scale. Test-retest reliability was obtained by the re-administration of the MCH-Feeding Scale to 25 children in each sample. RESULTS: Excellent construct validity was confirmed when the mean [+/- SD] scores of the normative and clinical samples were compared (32.65 +/- 12.73 versus 60.48 +/- 13.04, respectively; P < 0.01). Test-retest reliabilities were high for both groups (normative r=0.845, clinical r=0.92). CONCLUSION: The MCH-Feeding Scale can be used by paediatricians and other health care professionals for quick identification of feeding problems.