The utility of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health checklist for evaluating disability in a community-dwelling geriatric population sample

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate disability in community-dwelling individuals aged 65 years and over using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) checklist and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS-II) and to compare how these two ICF-based instruments measured disability in an attempt to show the utility of the ICF checklist in a field setting to describe disability. In this population-based, cross-sectional and descriptive study, data on the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II were collected from 200 selected participants who lived in a small town. Both the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II identified a considerable proportion of the elderly with a disability in life areas relevant to cognition and domestic life in a similar manner, the proportions ranging from 52.5 to 68.5%. However, the proportions of those with a disability showed a statistically significant difference in the domains of the two instruments relevant to mobility, self-care, and participation in society. Although the absolute intrarater agreement for matching items of the instruments ranged from 40.5 to 87.5%, kappa statistics showed slight to moderate agreement for the original ICF qualifier and mostly moderate agreement with reduced response options. ICF qualifiers were found to discriminate between the WHODAS-II domain scores in those with no, mild-moderate and severe-complete difficulty. The disparity between the data obtained from the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II in some domains may have resulted from differing interpretations of the items of the ICF checklist, lower reliability of some of the items, and the current feature of the qualifiers used without any adaptations. The ICF checklist has the potential to be used in a field setting, provided that some modifications are made.

Rater experience influences reliability and validity of the brief International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health Core Set for Stroke

“…The relatively low inter-rater reliability yielded for the EF indicates rooms for improvement in the design of the qualifier and test process. First, the number of response options can be decreased (14,15,35), such as from "-4" to "+4" to "-2" to "+2". This would lower the demand of quantifying the judgement to score process on the rater.…”

Disability and functioning assessment of women with RSI/WRMSDs: the use of the ICF checklist

“…Moreover, It is believed that the assessment of functioning and disability among people with RSI/WRMSDs on sick leave or not, should include their own perception of illness and demands to return to or remain at work, is an essential component in VR 6 , 11 . Studies in which the ICF Checklist has been adopted to analyze RSI/WRMSDs and other health problems point to the potential of this tool 14 , 15 , 16 , 23 . The results of the present study support the use of ICF by VR programs in two respects: first, as a possible way to explore the process of illness and disability by focusing on the impact of the illness on the individual’s functions; the second concerns the contribution in the development of a systematic instrument to measure the indirect consequences and social demands related to work disability as part of the its burden 28 , 29 .…”

“…To facilitate its use, the World Health Organization suggests the development of a checklist using a shorter version of all the ICF codes 12 . While this Checklist does not have universal validity, one may argue that it affords realistic representations of sociopolitical environments, and thus represents a more pragmatic approach 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 . The result of this initiative was the ICF RSI/WRMSDs core set, later renamed ­RSI/­WRMSDs Checklist 17 .…”

ICT-Based Comprehensive Health and Social-Needs Assessment System for Supporting Person-Centered Community Care

“…All items of the CHSNA system were mapped onto ICF components based on the available literature [13] and an expert consensus (Figure 2). Thirteen experts on medicine, nursing, public health, social welfare, and occupational therapy participated as the expert group.…”