A systematic review of validity and reliability assessment of measuring balance and walking at the level of International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in people with spinal cord injury.

Context: A spinal cord injury (SCI) is associated with a wide range of impairments in functioning, many limitations in activity, and restrictions for patients.

Objectives

The present study aimed to systematically review the psychometric properties (reliability and validity) of outcome measures used to assess walking and balance in people with spinal cord injury.

Methods

Databases such as PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Sciences were searched for relevant articles using various terms (title and abstract). Articles including the outcome measures of spinal cord injury patients and published in English from 2010 until 2021 were selected, and the quality of the selected studies was determined by applying the COSMIN checklist. Reliability and validity values were extracted, and conclusions were drawn about the psychometric quality of each measure.

Results

A total of 1253 records were retrieved, and among them 22 potentially eligible articles were identified, 15 of which were included in the present study. The COSMIN tool (Consensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement Instruments) was used to evaluate the quality level of imported articles based on the inclusion criteria.

Conclusions

One consideration for testing people with disabilities is to observe the reliability and validity of the instrument, which was addressed in this study in various fields. In our study, seven tools for assessing SCI were evaluated, and it was found that the 10-meter walk (10MWT) tool performs better and more easily than other tools. The Mini-BESTest tool was suggested as a reliable tool for assessing standing balance in SCI subjects.