OVC Wellbeing Tool

International AIDS Conference, Mexico 2008

Shannon SenefeldSusan Strasser

James Campbell

OVC Wellbeing Tool (OWT)

• Background

• Methodology

• Results

• Next Steps

Background• HIV Global Technical Team Meeting

November 2006

• Recognized the need for a comprehensive measure of OVC wellbeing

• Goal: create an instrument which can be used internationally to represent holistic OVC programming that is valid, reliable and practical to administer.

Methodology

•Literature Review

•Expert Statements

•Judging

•Draft tool created

The Tool

• Originally 48 Questions• Self-Report Measure• Likert Scale• Used for Children Aged 13-18

• 10 Domains of Wellbeing – Nutrition and food security – Shelter and environment – Protection – Family – Health

– Spirituality – Mental health – Education – Economic – Community cohesion

Piloting the OWT• 5 country evaluation:

– Rwanda– Kenya– Zambia– Haiti– Tanzania

Analysis Plan• Data from 890 OVC from the 5 countries• Compare the OWT data to larger evaluation data• Validate OWT against

Hope Scale

• Statistical Analysis:– Cronbach’s Alpha

– Confirmatory Factor

Analysis

Results• Cronbach’s Alpha

• Confirmatory Factor Analysis – Reduced number of items in the scale– 48 to 36

Larger Survey• Based on domains of

traditional OVC intervention• Similar across all five

countries, corresponding to OVC sectoral foci

• Generally strong correlation between larger survey and OWT scores

The Children’s Hope Scale1

– Stable tool shown to have internal consistency, convergent, discriminant and incremental validity

– Children’s hope conceptualized as positive expectations; agency and pathways

– Consistent with various definitions of resilience– 6 point Likert scale– Premise

• Children are goal directed• Higher “hope” → Increasing levels of agency and pathways thinking

– Validated against Children’s Hope Scale, the OWT showed a Spearman’s Rho of p<.01 for both the original long version and the shortened version.

1Snyder et al (1997). The Development and Validation of the Children’s Hope Scale. Journal of Pediatric Psychiatry 22(3), 399-421.

Challenges• Hope Scale Validation

• Translation

• Data scoring in the field

• Health domain revisited

• Future challenge: managing the immense amount of data

Conclusions• OWT now finalized

– Reduced number of items in the tool, now 36 items

– Requires approximately 20 minutes to complete

• End Result: A valid, practical tool to measure OVC wellbeing now exists.

Next Steps• Finish the User’s Guide• Roll out in other countries

(underway)• Continue data analysis to

determine predictive value of OWT

• Ideally, develop a similar tool for younger age groups

Thank you!

Download the tool and supporting documents:

www.crs.org/publications/ovc-wellbeing-tool