• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.30-41
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• 2019

Objectives Development of objective clinical measure for analyzing pediatric weakness has been studied. However, there is no gold standard clinical measures with acceptable validity and reliability were not provided yet and these has been major issue for clinics. Methods Some Korean medicine hospital outpatients (n=324) were recruited as participants, and 55 preliminary questions were given. Pediatric Weakness Scale (PWS) with five subscales and thirty questions were developed using factor analysis and item analysis. The internal consistency of PWS subscales were examined with using Cronbach's alpha. The correlations between PWS subscales and physical characteristics of Body Mass Index (BMI) and Ponderal Index (PI) were attested using Pearson's correlation. The differences between PWS subscale scores and profiles among 3 to 13 years old children were examined using profile analysis and ANOVA by gender. Results PWS five subscales explained 49.1% of total variance, and the range of Cronbach's alpha was from 0.700 to 0.803. The range of correlation coefficient between PWS total score and five subscales was from 0.643 to 0.748, and the PWS total score was significantly (p<0.001) correlated positively with BMI (r=-0.237) and negatively with PI (r=-0.280). The scores and profiles of PWS five subscales, BMI and PI were found to be significantly different among the all age groups. Conclusions Objective and validated clinical measure for analyzing pediatric weakness with five subscales was developed in current study, and foundations for screening, managing and treating pediatric weakness during the development were established as well. This study would contribute to the integrative education and clinical practice of the Eastern and Western medicine.