Development and Evaluation of an Item Pool of "Movement-Related Body Functions in the Context of Task Performance".

OBJECTIVE

The study aimed to describe the development and evaluation of an item pool for a new performance-based clinical outcome assessment (COA), the Spinal Cord Injury Movement Index (SCI-MovIn).

DESIGN

Iterative focus groups, one-on-one consultations and field-testing sessions were used to develop the conceptual model for the SCI-MovIn measurement construct, establish an item pool consisting of candidate items with 5 response categories, and create standardized guidelines for set-up, administration, and scoring. Trained therapists administered 61 items to individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) for inter- and intrarater reliability testing.

SETTING

Academic institution in an urban area.

PARTICIPANTS

Professionals with measurement/SCI expertise participated in focus groups. Individuals with SCI engaged in field-testing and reliability testing sessions.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Total percent exact agreement between paired raters was calculated. Cronbach's alpha (α) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to examine internal consistency. Intra- and interrater reliability were measured using ICCs.

RESULTS

Through iterative focus groups with 18 SCI/measurement professionals and 24 field-testing sessions with 10 individuals with SCI, 226 items were developed, 132 of which were eliminated. The reliability testing sample consisted of 33 adults who sustained SCI an average of 13.2 years before participation. Of the 1215 paired scores from administration of 61 SCI-MovIn items, raters' scores were identical for 833 (68.6%). Internal consistency was high (α=0.948). Reliability of repeated SCI-MovIn scores was high for both intrarater (ICC=0.992; CI=0.983-0.996) and interrater (ICC=0.887; CI=0.873-0.899) reliability.

CONCLUSION

The next step is a large-scale study to transform the item pool into a calibrated item bank from which tailored short forms can be developed.