Objective: The aim of this study was to validate a novel pictorial-based Longshi Scale for evaluating a patient's disability by healthcare professionals and non-professionals.
Design: Prospective study.
Setting: Rehabilitation departments from a grade A, class 3 public hospital, a grade B, class 2 public hospital, and a private hospital and seven community rehabilitation centers.
Subjects: A total of 618 patients and 251 patients with functional disabilities were recruited in a two-phase study, respectively.
Main measures: Outcome measure: pictorial scale of activities of daily living (ADLs, Longshi Scale). Reference measure: Barthel Index. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used to analyze the validity of Longshi Scale against Barthel Index.
Results: In phase 1 study, from March 2016 to August 2016, the results demonstrated that the Longshi Scale was both reliable and valid (intraclass correlation coefficient based on two-way random effect (ICC2,1) = 0.877-0.974 for intra-rater reliability; ICC2,1 = 0.928-0.979; κ = 0.679-1.000 for inter-rater reliability; intraclass correlation coefficient based on one-way random effect (ICC1,1) = 0.921-0.984 for test-retest reliability and Spearman correlation coefficient = 0.836-0.899). In the second phase, in March 2018, results further demonstrated that the Longshi Scale had good inter-rater and intra-rater reliability among healthcare professionals and non-professionals including therapists, interns, and personal care aids (ICC1,1 = 0.822-0.882 on Day 1; ICC1,1 = 0.842-0.899 on Day 7 for inter-rater reliability). In addition, the Longshi Scale decreased assessment time significantly, compared with the Barthel Index assessment (P < 0.01).
Conclusion: The Longshi Scale could potentially provide an efficient way for healthcare professionals and non-professionals who may have minimal training to assess the ADLs of functionally disabled patients.
Keywords: Activities of daily living; Barthel Index; Longshi Scale; functional disability evaluation; pictorial-based scale.