Personal Adjustment and Role Skills Measure (PARS)

The PARS-III asks a parent how their child is doing socially and emotionally alongside a chronic physical illness. The premise is that living with a long-term condition places adaptive demands on a child that a general behaviour checklist may not pick up.

Twenty-eight statements are rated from never or rarely to always, covering six areas: peer relations, dependency, hostility, productivity, anxiety and depression, and withdrawal. Items are recoded during scoring so that a higher score always means better adjustment, and subscale scores can be read alongside a total. It was designed for children aged 4 to 18 who have a chronic physical illness without intellectual impairment.

Learn More: The PARS-III has become the standard psychosocial measure in Duchenne muscular dystrophy care, where it is one of four instruments recommended in the standards of care. A clinical cut-off of 72.3 has been reported for that population. A shortened 22-item PARS-Adult was validated in 2021 for adults with DMD, with a cut-off of 59.1.