TY - JOUR PY - 1999// TI - Short versions of the telephone motor Functional Independence Measure for use with persons with spinal cord injury JO - Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation A1 - Dijkers, M. P. A1 - Yavuzer, G. SP - 1477 EP - 1484 VL - 80 IS - 11 N2 - OBJECTIVE: To determine if the motor ability of persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) can be reliably estimated using a subset of the 13 Functional Independence Measure (FIM) items. STUDY DESIGN: FIM item subsets of 5, 6, or 7 items were selected using one of five strategies: random, coefficient alpha maximization, spread across the range of item difficulties, optimization by neurologic category, and individual optimization. Motor ability estimated by these 15 subsets was compared to the 13-item estimate, using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), Rasch calibration person reliability estimate, and other indices of reliability. SUBJECTS: Subjects were 4,128 persons with SCI, 1 to 25 years postinjury, interviewed for annual research follow-up using the FIM. RESULTS: All subsets had high ICC reliability (>.90). Subsets of 7 items performed generally better than those of 6 or 5 items. The best performance was provided by individual optimization subsets. The ICC for the 7-item set thus selected was .99. CONCLUSION: In annual follow-up, the number of FIM motor items can be reduced almost 50% while maintaining reliable estimates of subjects' motor ability. This approach may also be useful for other applications of interviewing to obtain FIM data, eg, for program evaluation.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0003-9993 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -