The Wheelchair Skills Program (WSP) is an integrated system that includes elements for testing and training wheelchair users, clinicians and/or their caregivers. The WSP was, until recently, only available in English. The goal of this study is to evaluate the inter-rater and test-retest reliability of the French-Canadian version of the Wheelchair Skill Test (WST-F), a component of the WSP. Nine participants were evaluated twice with the WST-F, at T0 by 1 rater and at T1 by 2 raters, with 3-12 days between T0 and T1. The mean (±1SD) Total Percentage Score for the WST- F was 77.5±14.5% at T0 and 77.7±14.1% at T1. For the inter-rater and test-retest reliability, the ICCs for the Total Percentage Scores were 0.997 (95% IC: 0.989-0.999), and 0.984 (95% IC: 0.937-0.996). Our preliminary findings suggest that the WST-F has excellent inter-rater and test-retest reliability.
Wheelchair, wheelchair skills test, language translation, reliability.
This study is being funded by the Quebec Provincial Rehabilitation Network (REPAR) of the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ), the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (NSHRF) and the Fondation pour la recherche sur la moelle épinière. François Routhier holds a postdoctoral fellowship from the Institute of Aging of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (2005-2007) and from the FRSQ (2004).
François Routhier, PEng, PhD
Institut de réadaptation en déficience physique de Québec
525 boul. Hamel est
Québec, Canada, G1M 2S8
Email: Francois.Routhier@rea.ulaval.ca.
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