CAHPS Child Hospital Narrative Item Set
The Child Hospital Narrative Item Set is a series of open-ended questions designed to be answered by a parent or guardian of children who have been recently hospitalized to provide detailed feedback on their experiences with inpatient care. The item set can be added to the CAHPS Child Hospital Survey.
Questions in the Narrative Item Set for the Child Hospital Survey
The Child Hospital Narrative Item Set is composed of five items, which are intended to be asked together.
Review the Child Hospital Narrative Item Set (English and Spanish).
The items in the set cover the following topics:
- Experiences that went well.
- Experiences that could have been better.
- How clinicians and staff interacted and got along with the child.
- How clinicians and staff interacted and got along with them.
- How well clinicians and staff coordinated care for the child.
Like the core items, these supplemental questions prompt respondents to consider the child’s most recent stay in the hospital.
Note: Because of the sequential design of the questions, they are meant to be used together in the order specified. The CAHPS team strongly recommends against reordering the questions or selecting a subset of the questions for partial use.
Administering the Child Hospital Narrative Item Set
Organizations interested in using the Child Hospital Narrative Item Set can consult Administering the CAHPS Child Hospital Narrative Item Set (PDF, 262 KB). This guidance is intended for organizations considering whether to implement these narrative items and addresses the following issues:
- Deciding whether to use narrative items in your survey.
- Using the items on their own.
- Introducing the narrative items.
- Editing the items.
- Drawing a sample.
- Choosing an administration mode.
- Anticipated engagement by respondents.
- Anticipated response time.
- Anticipated length of comments.
- Overseeing vendors.
- Preparing to review and analyze the data.
Brief History
The CAHPS team began work on a new Narrative Item Set for the CAHPS Child Hospital Survey in 2017. The evaluation of these items was conducted as an experimental study. Learn more about the development of the CAHPS Child Hospital Narrative Item Set.
