Development and evaluation of a tablet-based participation measure for older adults in rehabilitation settings

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a tablet-based participation measure and to evaluate its reliability and acceptability to an older Chinese population in rehabilitation settings.

Method: A multidimensional, self-reported participation measure, the Participation Measure–3 Domains, 4 Dimensions (PM-3D4D), was programed into mobile application software and presented on tablet computers. To explore the reliability of the tablet-based PM-3D4D, 80 adults in rehabilitation outpatient settings aged ≥65 years completed the tablet and the paper versions of the measure at baseline and at 1-week follow-up. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated for concordance and test-retest reliability. Participants’ acceptability toward the two versions of the measure was described.

Results: The tablet-based PM-3D4D showed good to excellent test-retest reliability (Intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.79 ∼ 0.96) and high concordance with the paper-form (Intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.74–1.00). Approximately, 44% participants reported preference for the tablet-based measure, and 20% reported preference for the paper-form measure. Many participants found the tablet-based measure user-friendly, convenient, and environmentally-friendly.

Conclusions: Findings of this study provide supportive evidence for administering the tablet-based PM-3D4D to an older Chinese population in rehabilitation settings and suggest a promising measurement methodology for future clinical practice.

Implications for rehabilitation

• The developed tablet-based participation measure, the Participation Measure–3 Domains, 4 Dimensions (PM-3D4D), fills a critical void for an efficient and reliable rehabilitation outcome measure tailored to the needs of older adults in rehabilitation settings.

• The tablet-based PM-3D4D is a reliable outcome measure.

• Most of the older adults in rehabilitation settings preferred to use the tablet-based participation measure than the paper-form measure; and very few of them reported difficulty with using the tablet-version measure.

• A high concordance was found between data collected by the tablet version PM-3D4D and data collected by the paper version PM-3D4D.

Keywords:

• Rehabilitation
• computers
• social participation
• aging
• technology
• patient-reported outcome measure

Acknowledgements

We thank our collaborating hospitals: Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University Hospital and Shuang Ho Hospital.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that no conflicts of interest exist. The funding sources had no influence on the study design or findings.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by a grant [USTP-NTUT-TMU-106–05] from the University System of Taipei Joint Research Program (to Feng-Hang Chang) and in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [grant no. MOST105-2628-B-038–003-MY3].