Test-retest reliability of three life balance measures in people with neuromuscular disease: the activity card sort-NL, the activity calculator, and the occupational balance questionnaire

Abstract

Purpose

Life balance is a new and important concept in occupational therapy. New measurements are needed to assess and evaluate life balance and interventions aimed to achieve this concept. This article describes the test-retest reliability of three life balance measures: the Activity Calculator (AC), Activity Card Sort (ACS-NL(18-64)) and Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ11-NL).

Method

Data collection took place among 50 participants with neuromuscular diseases: facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD, n = 25) or mitochondrial myopathy (MM, n = 25). The AC, the ACS-NL(18–64) and the OBQ11-NL were assessed twice with an interval of one week. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC-agreement) were applied to examine test-retest reliability.

Results

The ICC of the AC-average total day score was .95 (95% CI .91-.97), whereas the ICC of the weights allocated to each activity was 0.80 (95% CI .77–0.82). The ICC of the ACS-NL(18–64) percentage retained activities was 0.92 (95% CI 0.86 − 0.96) and the ICC of the importance score per activity was- .76 (95% CI . 0.68–0.89). The ICC of the OBQ11-NL total score was .76 (95% CI 0.62–0.86).

Conclusion

All three tools showed good to excellent test-retest reliability in a sample of patients with FSHD or MM, which is promising for its use in clinical practice and research.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION

• The AC, ACS-NL(18–64) and the OBQ11-NL are promising, reliable measures of life balance in patients with neuromuscular diseases.

• The development of three new instruments for life balance enlarges the possibility for health professionals to measure life balance in clinical practice and research.

Keywords:

• Life balance
• activity calculator
• activity card sort
• occupational balance questionnaire
• fatigue
• test-retest reliability
• neuromuscular diseases
• outcome measures

Acknowledgements

First of all, we thank all participants in this study for their time and contribution, especially in view of their limited energy. We thank the patient organization Spierziekten Nederland for their assistance to promote the study and recruit participants. We want to thank the research assistants: Jana Zajec, Eirlys Pijpers, Erwin Jonker and Franny van Bergen-Ubbink for collecting the data. We thank the developers of the measures: Greke Hulstein and Karin ten Hove (Activity Calculator); Soemitro Poerbodipoero and Lennard Bijl (Activity Card Sort-NL); and Carita Håkansson and Petra Wagman (Occupational Balance Questionnaire) for the collaboration and sharing their knowledge.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. Funding for this work was provided by Prinses Beatrix Spier Fonds [project number W.OK16-04].

Additional information

Funding

This work was suported by Prinses Beatrix Spierfonds.