SET and GO
CAHS Child Development Service
The Child Development Service provides a range of developmental allied health, medical and nursing services for children living in the Perth metropolitan area who have a developmental delay or difficulty that impacts on function, participation and/or parent-child relationship.The SET and GO was developed and validated within the Child Development Service. It was developed to support demonstration of how well the service is ensuring that parents, carers and families have the knowledge, skills and confidence to support and advocate for their child’s developmental needs.
Overview of the SET and GO
The SET and GO is a nine-item outcome measurement tool that looks at change in parenting self-efficacy following provision of developmental services. The tool specifically looks at self-efficacy associated with parenting a child with a developmental concern.The tool is for use with caregivers of children with a range of clinical presentations accessing one or more of a range of developmental services.
The tool can be used with any caregiver (e.g. parent, foster carer; grandparent) who is involved in a developmental intervention with their child.
The SET and GO is valid, reliable, and is quick and easy to administer and score. The tool generates a change score that can be used as an indicator of the impact intervention has had on a caregiver’s self-efficacy.
Validity and reliability
The SET and GO was developed and validated by the Child Development Service in Perth, Western Australia. The sample included families who had received intervention from one or more of the following services:
- audiology
- clinical psychology
- developmental paediatric medical services
- occupational therapy
- physiotherapy
- social work
- speech pathology.
Validation with 204 families demonstrated that the tool is valid and reliable for use with a wide range of caregivers accessing developmental interventions for their child. An article that explains the development, validation and psychometric properties of the SET and GO is currently under review for publication.
Please contact communityhealthresearch@health.wa.gov.au if you would like further details of the results from the validation study.
Administration
The SET and GO can be completed via hard-copy or online. It should be noted that validation of the tool was completed using an online version of the tool.Caregivers complete the 9 questions independently following their final intervention session and the survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete.
The measure uses a retrospective pre-test, post-test design which requires caregivers to complete the tool only once at the point of completion of a service. Caregivers rate their perceived parenting self-efficacy ‘before’ they attended the service and ‘now’ at the completion of intervention.
Scoring
To calculate a caregiver’s change score, the total ‘before’ score (sum of all responses to before questions with a maximum of 90) is subtracted from the total ‘now’ score (sum of all responses to now questions with a maximum of 90).change score = total ‘now’ score – total ‘before’ score
Interpreting the change score
The minimal clinically important difference (MCID) value helps the clinician to interpret the SET and GO change score. An MCID value of ≥7 was established using a distribution approach during the validation of the tool. This means that any change score equal to or greater than 7 is outside the measurement error of the tool and indicates a meaningful change for the caregiver.Access to the SET and GO
The SET and GO is freely available. A pdf version of the tool is available via the following link: https://redcap.link/CDS-SET-and-GO
References
Nitsche, K., Pieterse, B., Lawrence, N. & Bear, N. (2025) Measuring our impact: Validation of a parenting self-efficacy outcome tool for caregivers participating in developmental interventions [Manuscript submitted for publication]. Child Development Service, Child and Adolescent Health Service.