Assessing Satisfaction of Children in out-of-Home Care: Development of Korean out-of-Home Care Satisfaction Scale

In order to offer client-centered services, it is important to measure children’s service satisfaction and reflect their needs to out-of-home care practices and policies. However, a reliable measure that assesses children’s satisfaction about out-of-home care is not found in Korea. This study aimed to develop a Korean out-of-home care satisfaction scale. The study sample consisted of 484 children from institutional care, group homes, and foster homes in Korea. Half of the sample was chosen randomly for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) based on 16 items from the Korean Foster Care Improvements Project. The other half of the sample was used for confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). EFA yielded two-factor structures that consist of eight items for each factor. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the two-factor structures with reasonable fit, and all items loaded significantly on the factors. The Korean out-of-home care satisfaction scale could be used as a tool to assess children’s satisfaction with out-of-home care services, which could allow social workers to reflect children’s needs immediately into practice and help policymakers make more informed decisions about out-of-home care services and programs.