WITHDRAWN: The Quest to Measure and Respond to Child Wellbeing in Disadvantaged Communities

Rumble’s Quest is a measure of social and emotional wellbeing for 6-to-12 year-olds that takes the form of an interactive video game. It is a core component of the Prevention Translation and Support System in the CREATE-ing Pathways Project that aims to build capacity for a system-level approach to supporting children’s development and welfare. It is an accessible tool for evaluating interventions and gathering community-wide data for shared goal-setting and coordinated action-planning. Rumble’s Quest was developed as one way of including children’s voices in the assessment of needs and outcomes. It focuses on indicators of positive development (e.g., interpersonal relationships, resources for coping, school engagement, being safe). The need for a new measure of primary school-aged children’s wellbeing emerged during the Pathways to Prevention Project (2002-2012), which was a family-school-community program that aimed to promote positive outcomes for children attending schools in a socio-economically stressed urban region. In response to our own need for a valid and reliable measure that could be used with whole school populations and within regular school routines, we developed Rumble’s Quest to: (i) better understand how children were faring and identify areas of need as a guide to responsive program planning, and (ii) assess change in outcomes in relation to program participation. The measure’s psychometric properties were tested with 3,460 children attending schools in high, medium and low socioeconomic areas. Principal factor analysis revealed a strong general dimension with high internal consistency (a = 0.88) that correlated at 0.49 or more with three validation measures, as well as the existence of four sub-factors (Attachment to School; Social Confidence; Emotional and Behavioural Self-Regulation; Supportive Relationships). The factor structure has been confirmed with a subsequent sample of over 4,500 children. The measure exhibits excellent test-retest reliability (r =.80), convergent and concurrent validity, and is a reliable and practical tool for use in both program planning and evaluation. An extensive system of on-line user resources supports the use of Rumble’s Quest in schools and community organisations, and in 2019 it is being used in more than 300 schools in 22 project communities. The measure is suitable as a social indicator at school, community, state or national levels. In the CREATE Project, Rumble’s Quest data are being combined with other community data sets to identify, at a community level, the prevalence of a range of risk and protective factors known to influence developmental outcomes. The aim is to help community partners prioritise issues of concern and develop a clear and common focus for collective action.