The Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America pediatric orthopaedic functional health questionnaire: An analysis of normals

Several questionnaires have been developed in an attempt to measure real-life functional levels of pediatric orthopaedic patients. One in particular was developed by the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America (POSNA) in 1994. This POSNA instrument yields four functional assessment scores, a global function score, and a happiness score (each having a possible range from 0 to 100). In this study, the POSNA questionnaire was administered to the parents of 57 normal children and 27 normal adolescents to determine how normal respondents can be expected to score. Means, standard deviations, and other statistics were derived for the functional scores. It was concluded that normal children should respond quite high on all the scores, possibly 100. These results allow us to understand that a child scoring in the low 80s or less is functioning at a different level than the normal child.