An Italian Validation of ABILHAND-Kids for Children With Cerebral Palsy

Abstract

Limitations in hand function are common among children with cerebral palsy (CP), with almost 50% presenting an arm-hand dysfunction. However, there is no standardized assessment tool available in Italian for evaluating bimanual performance for this population. Our objective in this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of an Italian translation of the ABILHAND-Kids (ABILHAND-Kids-IT) among children with CP. We examined internal consistency using Cronbach's Alpha and Omega coefficients, and we investigated test-retest reliability with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). We performed explorative factor analysis (EFA) to investigate structural validity. We calculated Pearson's correlation coefficients between the ABILAND-Kids IT and the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) to assess criterion validity; and, to demonstrate the score variability of the ABILHAND-Kids-IT, we used analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to compare the 181 children with CP in this sample with their levels on the MACS. We enrolled 181 children with CP in the study. EFA confirmed a uni-dimensional scale. We obtained internal consistency on both Cronbach's Alpha and Omega coefficient of 0.98, and a one-week test-retest reliability analysis revealed an ICC with 95% of confidence interval of .992. The ANOVA revealed significant score variability (p < 0.01) and the Pearson correlation coefficient comparing the ABILHAND-Kids-It score with the MACS was -0.929 (p < 0.01). We conclude that the ABILHAND-Kids-IT is valid and reliable for use with Italian children with CP.

Keywords: MACS; assessment; cerebral palsy; childhood; evaluation; hand function; outcome measure.