Participation and Environment Measure

The Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth (PEM-CY) is a caregiver-report instrument that measures how children aged 5 to 17, with and without disabilities, participate in the home, school, and community, and the environmental supports and barriers that shape that participation. Developed by Wendy Coster, Mary Law, Gary Bedell, Mary Khetani and colleagues and published in 2011-2012, the PEM-CY operationalizes the participation construct of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) by asking, for each setting, how often a child takes part, how involved they are, and whether the family desires change, alongside ratings of which environmental features help or hinder. Its distinctive contribution is to measure participation and environment together rather than treating the environment as a separate afterthought.