Participation it’s a vital expression of human experience, resulting in feelings of competence and satisfaction; it’s also seen as essential to general development and skills acquisition (Eccles et al., 2003). The concept of participation, was viewed as a central one by the International Classification of Functioning (OMS, 2003) where it was defined as the individual’s involvement in everyday life activities or roles. As so, it has been related to quality of life and general health but especially as a key issue on what concerns inclusion for children with disabilities.

In what concerns participation of children with disabilities, and although they enjoy and participate in a set of activities, they encounter more barriers to frequent participation than their peers without disabilities (Fauconnier et al., 2009; King et al, 2009).

Debate about participation revolves around the several dimensions (eg., involvement, enjoyment, frequency, intensity) of the concept (Coster & Khetani, 2008; Eriksson, 2006), and how it can be operationalized and measured. New instruments are being developed to study this multidimensional concept. One of these, the Participation and Environment Measure-Children and Youth, PEM-CY (Coster et al., 2011), was developed to examine participation (frequency, extent of involvement and desire of change) and environment factors (perceived supports and barriers) that affect participation. It’s a parent report measure that studies parents’ perceptions on their children (5 to 17 years) across typical activities/ situations on home, school and community settings. This measurement stands from others because: it studies a wide range of settings, activities and environmental factors; allows us to get the point of view of families with children from different ages and abilities; and, according to it’s authors, it is innovative because it studies participation and environmental factors simultaneously.

The aims of this research are to translate and adapt the PEM-CY to Portuguese language, using a back-translation method,  according to authors guidelines, and to examine the psychometric properties of the translated PEM-CY.

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