Reliability of the ELUI Upper Extremity Functionality Test

Abstract

Manual dexterity is a key skill for the performance of everyday activities. Measurements of muscle strength, range of motion, and sensitivity alone may not reflect the functional status in assessing physical and functional conditions. It is also important to use self-applied assessments and specific functional tests to assess overall performance and test aspects such as dexterity, coordination and grasp quality, but these may differ in terms of standardization and psychometric properties. From this need we have developed the Elui Upper Extremity Functionality Test, with the intent to provide a national measuring instrument of the upper extremity and reference to be used in clinical practice, but its psychometric properties have not been yet defined. Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the interexaminer reliability and test retest of the Elui Upper Extremity Functionality Test. Methods: Healthy volunteers (50) of both genders, with an average age of 32.62 years and no impairment or symptoms in the upper limbs were submitted to the test by two examiners and after 30 days by one examiner. The application of this test requires simple materials present in our everyday life, divided into 10 sub-items: Simulated writing, Turning a Key, Grasping small objects, Simulated feeding, Pouring water, Opening containers, Cutting with a knife, Simulated dressing, Grasping large and light objects, and Grasping large and heavy objects. Each volunteer evaluated should perform each item test with both hands or with the dominant hand, depending on the sub-item analyzed, and if needed, they adapted the laterality. Results: A statistical analysis was carried out to compare the differences in time measurements of each sub-item of the test in seconds. The analysis of the inter-examiner reliability and test-retest used the Interclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) with a confidence interval of 95% and p < 0.05. The local Research Ethics Committee approved this study and all volunteers signed an informed consent form. With the exception of the Grasping small objects task, which had an unacceptable ICC (0.65), the results showed that all the other nine items had excellent inter-examiner reliability: between 0.95 and 0.99 and Cronbach’s alpha between 0.97 and 0.99. For the test-retest, the tasks with excellent reliability were Pouring water ICC 0.98 and simulated writing with ICC 0.91, good reliability for the tasks Grasping large and heavy objects ICC 0.85, Cutting with a knife ICC 0.85 and Simulated feeding ICC 0.80; acceptable reliability for the items Turning a key ICC 0.74 and Simulated dressing ICC 0.76; with Cronbach’s alpha of all tasks between 0.79 and 0.99. Conclusion: The Elui test showed excellent repeatability between examiners as well as with repeated measurements over time by the same examiner in most sub-items, being considered reliable for the studied sample using the third measurement.