Health measurement using the ICF: Test-retest reliability study of ICF codes and qualifiers in geriatric care
- PDF / 1,013,347 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 610 x 792 pts Page_size
- 59 Downloads / 212 Views
Open Access
Research
Health measurement using the ICF: Test-retest reliability study of ICF codes and qualifiers in geriatric care Jiro Okochi*†1, Sakiko Utsunomiya†2 and Tai Takahashi†2 Address: 1Department of Health Services Coordination, Graduate School of Medical Sciences. Kyushu University. Maedashi 3-1-1 Higashiku, Fukuoka, 812-8586, Japan and 2Department of Health Service Management, International University of Health and Welfare, 2600-1 KitaKanamaru Ohtawara, Tochigi, 324-0011, Japan Email: Jiro Okochi* - [email protected]; Sakiko Utsunomiya - [email protected]; Tai Takahashi - [email protected] * Corresponding author †Equal contributors
Published: 29 July 2005 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2005, 3:46 46
doi:10.1186/1477-7525-3-
Received: 23 February 2005 Accepted: 29 July 2005
This article is available from: http://www.hqlo.com/content/3/1/46 © 2005 Okochi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) was published by the World Health Organization (WHO) to standardize descriptions of health and disability. Little is known about the reliability and clinical relevance of measurements using the ICF and its qualifiers. This study examines the test-retest reliability of ICF codes, and the rate of immeasurability in long-term care settings of the elderly to evaluate the clinical applicability of the ICF and its qualifiers, and the ICF checklist. Methods: Reliability of 85 body function (BF) items and 152 activity and participation (AP) items of the ICF was studied using a test-retest procedure with a sample of 742 elderly persons from 59 institutional and at home care service centers. Test-retest reliability was estimated using the weighted kappa statistic. The clinical relevance of the ICF was estimated by calculating immeasurability rate. The effect of the measurement settings and evaluators' experience was analyzed by stratification of these variables. The properties of each item were evaluated using both the kappa statistic and immeasurability rate to assess the clinical applicability of WHO's ICF checklist in the elderly care setting. Results: The median of the weighted kappa statistics of 85 BF and 152 AP items were 0.46 and 0.55 respectively. The reproducibility statistics improved when the measurements were performed by experienced evaluators. Some chapters such as genitourinary and reproductive functions in the BF domain and major life area in the AP domain contained more items with lower test-retest reliability measures and rated as immeasurable than in the other chapters. Some items in the ICF checklist were rated as unreliable and immeasurable. Conclusion: The reliability of the ICF codes when measured with the current I
Data Loading...
