In recent years there has been a growing interest in methods of eliciting
children's views on factors influencing their lives. When children's views
are sought it is important that this is done in a developmentally appropriate
manner with instruments whose psychometric properties are known. The
present review describes a variety of methods that have been used to
evaluate children's satisfaction with services in education, paediatrics and
mental health. The majority of the studies used self-completion
questionnaires and provided only limited information on reliability. Means
of establishing reliability and validity in research with children are
discussed, as are the variables that have been found to correlate with child
satisfaction.
