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Published on: January 11, 2016
Pediatric Arm Function Test: reliability and validity for assessing more-affected arm motor capacity in children with
Gitendra Uswatte1, Edward Taub, Angi Griffin
1Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1530 3rd Ave South, Room CH415, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA.
Insights
The Pediatric Arm Function Test (PAFT) reliably measures the more-affected arm
Area of Science:
- Pediatric rehabilitation
- Neuroscience
- Motor control in cerebral palsy
Background:
- Existing upper-extremity assessments for children with cerebral palsy (CP) lack focus on the more-affected arm's functional capacity.
- There is a need for a reliable and valid tool to assess arm function in young children with CP.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the reliability and validity of the Pediatric Arm Function Test (PAFT) Functional Ability scale.
- To establish PAFT as a measure for assessing arm function in children with CP.
Main Methods:
- Study 1: Assessed test-retest reliability of PAFT in 20 children (2-8 years) with hemiparetic CP over 3 weeks.
- Study 2: Evaluated convergent validity of PAFT in 41 children (2-6 years) with hemiparetic CP by correlating scores with motor impairment severity.
Main Results:
- PAFT demonstrated good test-retest reliability with a correlation coefficient of 0.74 (Study 1).
- Strong inverse correlation (r = -0.6, P < 0.001) between PAFT scores and motor impairment grade supported convergent validity (Study 2).
Conclusions:
- The PAFT Functional Ability scale is a reliable and valid measure for assessing the more-affected arm's motor capacity in children (2-6 years) with cerebral palsy.
- PAFT can be utilized as an outcome measure in upper-extremity neurorehabilitation for children with CP.
Objective:
Although there are several validated upper-extremity measures in young children with cerebral palsy, none of these primarily assess the capacity to carry out actions and tasks with the more-affected arm. To address this need, we developed the Pediatric Arm Function Test (PAFT), which involves the behavioral observation of how children use their more-affected arm during structured play in a laboratory or clinic. This article evaluates the reliability and validity of the PAFT Functional Ability scale.
Design:
In study 1, a total of 20 children between 2 and 8 yrs old with a wide range of upper-extremity hemiparesis caused by cerebral palsy completed the PAFT on two occasions separated by 3 wks. In study 2, a total of 41 children between 2 and 6 yrs old with similar characteristics completed the PAFT and received a grade reflecting the severity of more-affected arm motor impairment.
Results:
In study 1, the PAFT test-retest reliability correlation coefficient was 0.74. In study 2, convergent validity was supported by a strong inverse correlation (r = -0.6, P < 0.001) between the PAFT scores and the grade of impairment.
Conclusions:
The PAFT Functional Ability scale is a reliable and valid measure of more-affected arm motor capacity in children between 2 and 6 yrs old with cerebral palsy. It can be used to measure upper-extremity neurorehabilitation outcome.
