Scientific/Clinical ArticleThe Upper Limb Functional Index: Development and Determination of Reliability, Validity, and Responsiveness
Section snippets
Study Design
The development, construction, and final validation of a new regional upper limb questionnaire require a methodological process that is systematic and follows established protocols. The “Guyatt Model” of questionnaire development30, 44, 45 achieves this through its systematic three-stage process as demonstrated in Figure 1. This model and process incorporate the literature search and review strategy instituted by Michener and Leggins7 and mirror the development model of the DASH38 and
Results
The study sample provided 214 responses from 139 subjects for both the ULFI and DASH with nine subjects and their responses being excluded providing a final total of 205 responses from 130 subjects. The UEFS had 64 responses from 32 subjects with one subject and his or her responses excluded to provide a total of 62 responses from 31 subjects (Table 1). The demographic data on all subjects are detailed in Table 2.
Data distribution demonstrated substantial variance in all values for the three
Discussion
This prospective study investigated the ULFI as a new regional upper limb SROM tool analyzing its concurrent performance compared to advocated measures, the DASH and the UEFS. The results demonstrated that the ULFI has both methodological and practical characteristic advantages for measuring upper extremity disorders. Reliability, internal consistency, criterion and construct validity, sample size, error measurement, and responsiveness have been demonstrated to be comparable to the properties
Conclusions
This study achieved its two primary objectives. It validated the ULFI and demonstrated that its essential psychometric properties of reliability, validity, responsiveness, error measurement, and internal consistency approximate or exceed those of the DASH and UEFS. The latter advocated tools are shown to be self-limiting in determining maximum impairment and have practical restraints that affect clinical utility, limitations that may also by implication be present in the UEFI. The ULFI's
Quiz: Article #039
Record your answers on the Return Answer Form found on the tear-out coupon at the back of this issue. There is only one best answer for each question.
- #1.
The ULFI includes:
- a.
a Moberg pick-up test
- b.
an SAT
- c.
a VALPAR
- d.
a VAS
- a.
- #2.
The following stat was used to determine the reliability of the ULFI:
- a.
Kappa
- b.
ANOVA
- c.
ICC
- d.
student T test
- a.
- #3.
Missing responses are:
- a.
anticipated in all SROMs
- b.
not seen in the ULFI
- c.
not seen in the DASH
- d.
not seen in the UEFS
- a.
- #4.
The authors claim that compared to the DASH and UEFS, the ULFI is:
- a.
less practical
- b.
higher in
- a.
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