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. 2020 May 13;15(5):e0233045.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233045. eCollection 2020.

Psychometric testing of the Fall Risks for Older People in the Community screening tool (FROP-Com screen) for community-dwelling people with stroke

Shamay S M Ng  1 , Tai-Wa Liu  1   2 , Patrick W H Kwong  3 , Ho-Man Choy  1 , Terence Y K Fong  1 , Justine Y C Lee  1 , Yi-Li Tan  1 , Gary Y H Tong  1 , Crystal C Y Wong  1 , Cynthia Y Y Lai  1 , Mimi M Y Tse  4
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Psychometric testing of the Fall Risks for Older People in the Community screening tool (FROP-Com screen) for community-dwelling people with stroke

Shamay S M Ng et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objective: The Falls Risk for Older People in the Community assessment (FROP-Com) was originally developed using 13 risk factors to identify the fall risks of community-dwelling older people. To suit the practical use in busy clinical settings, a brief version adopting 3 most fall predictive risk factors from the original FROP-Com, including the number of falls in the past 12 months, assistance required to perform domestic activities of daily living and observation of balance, was developed for screening purpose (FROP-Com screen). The objectives of this study were to investigate the inter-rater and test-retest reliability, concurrent and convergent validity, and minimum detectable change of the FROP-Com screen in community-dwelling people with stroke.

Participants: Community-dwelling people with stroke (n = 48) were recruited from a local self-help group, and community-dwelling older people (n = 40) were recruited as control subjects.

Results: The FROP-Com screen exhibited moderate inter-rater (Intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]2,1 = 0.79, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.65-0.87) and test-retest reliability (ICC3,1 = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.46-0.83) and weak associations with two balance measures, the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) (rho = -0.38, p = 0.008) and the Timed "Up & Go" (TUG) test (rho = 0.35, p = 0.016). The screen also exhibited a moderate association with the Chinese version of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC-C) (ABC-C; rho = -0.65, p<0.001), a measure of subjective balance confidence.

Conclusions: The FROP-Com screen is a reliable clinical tool with convergent validity paralleled with subjective balance confidence measure that can be used in fall risk screening of community-dwelling people with stroke. However, one individual item, the observation of balance, will require additional refinement to improve the potential measurement error.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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