title: Using the unbiased perspectives of people living with a spinal cord injury in assessments of mobility.
abstract: METHODS
  Clinometrics study.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To devise a way of capturing the unbiased perspectives of people living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) in assessments of mobility.
  
  
  METHODS
  SCI unit and community.
  
  
  METHODS
  Three groups of raters used the Global Impression of Change Scale (GICS) to rate change in mobility of a cohort of patients with a recent SCI. The three groups of raters were as follows: 10 people with a recent SCI, 10 people with an established SCI and 10 physiotherapists. The ratings were done after viewing 51 pairs of videos depicting one of three motor tasks: sitting unsupported, transferring and walking. Each pair of videos showed the same person performing the same motor task on two occasions. The videos were taken between 1 h and 5 months apart and presented side by side, randomly left or right, on the screen. Raters were asked to score the amount of change in performance between the two videos on a 7-point Global Impression of Change Scale (GICS). Intra-rater reliability for the three motor tasks and three groups of raters was determined using intra-class correlation coefficients.
  
  
  RESULTS
  People with an SCI were reliable at rating change in patients' abilities to transfer and walk with ICC's ranging from 0.66 to 0.81 (95% Confidence interval bounds ranging from 0.51 to 0.94). Physiotherapists were consistently but only marginally more reliable at rating than people with an SCI.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Videos and the GICS may provide a way of using the unbiased perspectives of people living with spinal cord injury in assessments of mobility.
authors.affiliation: Moorong Spinal Unit, Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Booth
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Harvey
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Denis
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barratt
authors.forename: G T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Allison
authors.forename: R D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Adams
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D006801:Humans; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D059825:Physical Therapists; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000628:therapy; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014741:Video Recording / Q000379:methods