Reliability and validity of the GMFM-66 in 0- to 3-year-old children with cerebral palsy.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the reliability and validity of a 66-item version of the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM-66) to assess the gross motor functions of children <3 yrs old with cerebral palsy.


METHODS
298 valid samples were obtained from 171 children with cerebral palsy (male 126, female 45, mean age 19 mos, age range 3-36 mos) measured with GMFM-88. Then a 73-item version of GMFM (GMFM-73) special for these children was obtained by Rasch analysis. GMFM-66 score and GMFM-73 scores of each sample were obtained. The reliability and validity of GMFM-66 were evaluated by analyzing the correlation between the scores and between the change scores of these two GMFM versions. The relative precision of GMFM-73 vs. GMFM-66 was also analyzed.


RESULTS
The test-retest reliability and interscorer reliability of GMFM-66 were both high. The ICC scores were 0.9666 and 0.9782, respectively. Significant correlations were found between the scores (r = 0.9848, P < 0.001) and between the change scores (r = 0.8700, P < 0.001) of these two versions of GMFM. A 14% less gain in relative precision was achieved when using GMFM-73 vs. GMFM-66.


CONCLUSIONS
Results indicated that the GMFM-66 had good reliability and validity in assessing the gross motor functions of children <3 yrs old with cerebral palsy. The GMFM-73 derived in the present study did not function significantly better for young children than GMFM-66.
Wei
Shi
S
Rehabilitation Center, Children's Hospital, Fudan University, 183 FengLin Road, Shanghai 200-032, China.
Su-Juan
Wang
W
Yuan-Gui
Liao
L
Hong
Yang
Y
Xiu-Juan
Xu
X
Xiao-Mei
Shao
S
D002547:Cerebral Palsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results