The purpose of this paper is to present and describe a motor assessment scale (MAS) for stroke patients and to report on the investigation of two aspects of its reliability. The MAS is a brief and easily administered assessment of eight areas of motor function and one item related to muscle tone. Each item is scored on a scale from 0 to 6. To check interrater reliability, we videotaped five stroke patients while they were being assessed with the MAS. These scores were used as the criterion ratings. Twenty raters then assessed these patients, and their results were correlated with the criterion ratings. We determined test-retest reliability by assessing on two occasions, separated by a four-week interval, 14 stroke patients whose recovery was considered to be stable and by correlating these scores. The MAS was found to be highly reliable with an average interrater correlation of .95 and an average test-retest correlation of .98.

Background

Statistics used to estimate the population correlation ratio were reviewed and evaluated. The sampling distributions of Kelley's ε 2 and Hays' ω 2 were studied empirically by computer simulation within the context of a three level one-way fixed effects analysis of variance design. These statistics were found to have rather large standard errors when small samples were used. As with other correlation indices, large samples are recommended for accuracy of estimation.Both & e p s i l o n ; 2 and ω 2 were found to be negligibly biased. Heterogeneity of variances had negligible effects on the estimates under conditions of proportional representativeness of sample sizes with respect to their population counterparts, but combinations of heterogeneity of variance and unrepresentative sample sizes yielded especially poor estimates.EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT 1975, 35, 541-554.

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