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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Reliability of the Barthel Index when used with older people | | Author(s) | Anita Sainsbury, Gudrun Seebass, Aruna Bansal |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 34, no 3, May 2005 |
| Pages | pp 228-232 |
| Source | http://www.ageing.oupjournals.org |
| Keywords | Mobility ; Self care capacity ; Evaluation ; Reliability ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | The Barthel Index (BI) has been recommended for the functional assessment of older people, but the reliability of the measure for this patient group is uncertain. The authors searched Medline, Cinahl and Embase to January 2003 for relevant studies. The scope of the 12 studies identified included all common clinical settings relevant to older people. No study tested test-retest reliability. Inter-rater reliability was reported as "fair" to "moderate" agreement for individual BI items, and a high percentage agreement for the total BI score. However, these findings were difficult to interpret, as few studies reported the prevalence of disability categories for the study populations. There may be considerable inter-observer disagreement. There was evidence that the BI might be reliable in patients with cognitive impairment and when scores obtained by patient interview are compared with patient testing. The role of assessor training and/or guidelines on the reliability of the BI has not been investigated. Although the BI is highly recommended, there remain important uncertainties concerning its reliability when used with older people. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050520207 A |
| Classmark | C4: CA: 4C: 5HC: 64A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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