Development of a clinical assessment of quality of movement for unilateral upper-limb function

Eleven subjects with cerebral palsy were assessed both with the Melbourne Assessment and by four clinical experts. Comparison of their assessment ratings revealed that the Melbourne Assessment was strongly related to the clinical judgement of the experts. A further 20 subjects were administered the Melbourne Assessment and two occupational therapists scored each subject's performance from videotaped assessments with substantial inter-rater reliability (0.68); intra-rater agreement after two weeks was 0.80. The Melbourne Assessment may provide a satisfactory objective measure of the quality of upper-limb function.