Behaviormetrika
Online ISSN : 1349-6964
Print ISSN : 0385-7417
ISSN-L : 0385-7417
Articles
VALIDITY OF A SHORTENED TEST BATTERY FOR EVALUATING AMBULATION AND TRANSFER ACTIVITIES IN POST-STROKE PATIENTS BY MEANS OF PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS AND CRONBACH'S ALPHA COEFFICIENT
Kazuhiko ShimizuMasuo ShiratakaHisako TajiriHayato TanabeHideo Miyahara
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2005 Volume 32 Issue 1 Pages 55-70

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Abstract

In our previous study using 179 post-stroke patients with hemiplegia, we employed the standard test consisting of 93 items for assessing gait or related ambulatory actions to investigate the relationships between the comprehensive evaluation by the rater and the sum of all 93 test scores, between the grade of functional disturbance of the patients and the number of tests which could be performed successfully by the same patients, and the mutual correlation among all tests expressed by the scores. In the present study, we first confirmed by means of principal component analysis whether each test item used in the previous study was effective for evaluation of the severity of ambulatory disability, but not of other functions such as body balance. Subsequently, we narrowed down the number of selected test items by referring to the results of Cronbach's alpha and their respective clinical features. Finally, we worked out an abbreviated test battery composed of 7 items. The alpha value of the combination of this refined test battery of 7 items stood at 0.958. The sum of the 7 item test scores for each individual was statistically compared with the subjective scores given by the raters in their comprehensive evaluation. The resulting correlation coefficient was 0.982. These results provide evidence that our new shorter test battery would maintain its higher performance both in validity and reliability, even when the number of test items is reduced from 32 to 7.

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© 2005 The Behaviormetric Society
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