Reliability of the Self-Report Administration of the ABILHAND Questionnaire in Chronic Stroke

The ABILHAND is among the most widely used questionnaires in upper limb rehabilitation. This study aimed to evaluate whether self-report procedure of the ABILHAND-Stroke is concordant with performance observation-based procedure. Two assessments were performed with each patient on the same day using the Beninese version of the ABILHAND. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC2,1) and Bland-Altman plot were used to evaluate the agreement and the relationships between ABILHAND measures. A total of 123 people with chronic stroke were included in the study. ICC was .77 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [.67, .82]) with p < 10^-6 demonstrating a good concordance between both assessment methods despite significant difference between patients' mean measures (self-report = -0.06 ± 2.64 logit; performance-based = 1.28 ± 3.57 logit; p value < .0001). Results confirmed the concordance of the self-report regarding the performance-based measures. In clinical routine self-report of ABILHAND scale might be useful for initial screening purposes while for further investigation the performance observation-based procedure should be preferred.