Abstract
Objective
To examine the psychometric properties of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence
(ABC) scale administered in the Slovene version with a simplified 5-option response
format (ABC-5/SLO) using Rasch analysis.
Design
Methodological research on data gathered in a cross-sectional study.
Setting
Outpatient university rehabilitation clinic.
Participants
A convenience sample of adults with unilateral lower-limb amputation (N=138; 75% men)
longer than 6 months who regularly wear a prosthesis.
Intervention
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
We evaluated functioning of rating scale categories, internal construct validity,
reliability indices, and dimensionality using the ABC-5/SLO (0=no confidence to 4=complete
confidence).
Results
The ABC-5/SLO rating scale fulfilled the category functioning criteria. All items
fit the underlying scale construct (balance confidence) except item 8 (“walk outside
the house to a car parked in the driveway”), which was overfitting. The person abilities-item
difficulty matching (targeting) was good. The person separation reliability was .92,
and the item separation reliability was .99. Analysis of the standardized Rasch residuals
showed the scale’s unidimensionality and absence of high item dependency (residual
correlations, <.30). The correlation between the ABC-5/SLO and the Prosthetic Mobility
Questionnaire (Rasch measures) was high (ρ=.84), as expected. Minor signs of item
redundancy were found.
Conclusions
The simplified ABC-5/SLO scale is a valid and reliable measure of balance confidence
for individuals with lower-limb amputation. It is possible to transform the ordinal
summed raw scores of the ABC-5/SLO into interval-level measurements using a nomogram.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
ABC (Activities-specific Balance Confidence scale), ABC-5 (Activities-specific Balance Confidence scale with 5-option response format), ABC-5/SLO (Slovene version of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence scale with 5-option response format), DIF (differential item functioning), LLA (lower-limb amputation), MnSq (mean square statistics), PMQ (Prosthetic Mobility Questionnaire)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 20, 2020
Footnotes
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
