Validation of the Portuguese Version of the “Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale”

• Autor(a) principal: Branco, Pedro Soares; Chefe de Serviço do Serviço de Medicina Física e de Reabilitação do Hospital de Curry Cabral, Lisboa (Directora: Drª Eugénia Veiga). Responsável pela Unidade de Ensino de Medicina Física e de Reabilitação da Faculdade de Ciências Médicas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.25759/spmfr.40

Introduction: many available instruments for the evaluation of balance, fall risk and fear of fallingmeasure simple indoors activities and present a “ceiling effect” in community dwelling elderly. The “ActivitiesspecificBalance Confidence (ABC) Scale” was designed to evaluate balance more thoroughly in several activitiesof daily living with different levels of difficulty.Objectives: translate to Portuguese and culturally adapt to Portugal the “Activities-specific Balance Confidence(ABC) Scale” and to assess its’ reliability.Methods: translation and cultural adaptation of the instrument. Evaluation of an elderly Portuguese populationto assess the instrument’s intra and interobserver reliability and internal consistency.Results: Results showed great homogeneity in most of the compared data, either intra or interobserver. They also showhigh internal consistency. These reliability levels were preserved even when any of the 16 questions of thequestionnaire was removed, with values that were almost identical to those of the complete questionnaireConclusions: The Portuguese version showed good intra and interobserver reliability and internal consistency in the evaluation of balance self-perception for several activities of daily living in an elderly Portuguese population. Further studieswill be required to assess the usefulness of this instrument for the evaluation of fall risk and the effect oftherapeutic interventions in this population.Keywords: Activities of Daily Living; Postural Balance; Questionnaires.