Original articlePerformance-Based or Self-Report Measures of Physical Function: Which Should Be Used in Clinical Trials of Hip Fracture Patients?
Section snippets
Subjects
Data used for these analyses were obtained from a 24-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter study of an investigational drug to treat muscle wasting among patients recovering from a unilateral hip fracture with noncomplicated surgical repair. The patients were age 65 years or older (men or women), within 17 days of surgical repair of a unilateral hip fracture, and at least partially weight-bearing. Surgical repair occurred no more than 4 days posthip fracture. Prior to
Results
Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of the sample at baseline and week 12. At week 12, there were 26 patients (24.1%) lost to follow-up. The mean age of the sample ± SD (N=108) was 79.4±8.0, with approximately 75% (n=79) women. For all performance and self-report measures, the mean and median scores increased significantly from baseline to week 12.
Discussion
The main finding of this study is that the validity, sensitivity to change, and responsiveness of self-report and performance-based measures of physical function are comparable in a sample of patients with recent hip fracture.
Consistent with previous studies, all measures included in this study of patients recovering from hip fracture had a high degree of concurrent, known-groups, construct, and predictive validity as measures of physical function. When concurrent validity was assessed, all
Conclusions
This study did not support prior findings that performance-based measures of physical function have superior psychometric properties when compared with self-report measures of physical function, and, in particular, did not find evidence that performance measures have superior sensitivity to change. Both measurement approaches (self-report and performance-based) produced similar and acceptable results in terms of validity, sensitivity to change, and responsiveness.
Because the psychometric
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Supported by Merck and Co.
A commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has conferred or will confer a financial benefit on the author or one or more of the authors. Jette has stock interests in CRE Care, LLC, which distributes the activity measure for postacute care products.