Development of a new mobility scale for people living in the community after stroke: content validity

Mobility inside and outside the home, and in the community, is important to independence of lifestyle after stroke. Existing measures lack content validity relating to these three environments. The aim of this study was to contribute to the content validity phase of developing a new scale for assessing mobility of people with stroke in these settings. An open-ended questionnaire was used to obtain responses from 15 physiotherapists with substantial experience in neurological physiotherapy. Responses were coded to provide a comprehensive list of tasks and destinations. A wide range of destinations was identified for i) inside the home: bedroom, bathroom/toilet, living room, kitchen; ii) outside the home: access to and from property, outside buildings, clothes line, garden and letterbox; iii) in the community: access to health and shopping facilities, leisure sites and public transport. Although a diverse range of tasks was identified, a common theme emerged to emphasise the impact of the environment on mobility. Responses were recorded in all dimensions of a recently published conceptual model of mobility that focused on environment. These dimensions included distance, time constraints, ambient conditions, terrain characteristics, external physical load, attentional demands, postural transitions and traffic level. Further work is required to quantify environmental dimensions which are relevant to the destinations identified in the three environmental settings of this study.