Bimanual ability for brachial plexus birth injury: a validity and reliability study of the ABILHAND-Kids

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Purpose ABILHAND-Kids is a structured parent report that assesses manual ability in activities of daily living in children with cerebral palsy, and also brachial plexus birth injury (BPBI). This study investigated the validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the ABILHAND-Kids in children with BPBI.Materials and methods The ABILHAND-Kids was administered to parents of 119 children with BPBI between 6 and 15 years for validity and internal consistency, also 92 parents were re-interviewed after two weeks to establish test-retest reliability. Its concurrent validity was examined by correlating scores on the ABILHAND-Kids with Active Movement Scale-Total Score.Results ABILHAND-Kids were strongly correlated with AMS-Total score (p < 0.001, r = 0.87) ABILHAND-Kids test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC: 0.93, %95 CI: 0.90–0.95). The internal consistency for the total score of ABILHAND-Kids was excellent (alpha = 0.94). For 20 items, item-total correlations were adequate (corrected item-total correlations, 0.27–0.85), one item which was “switching on a bedside lamb” had no adequate correlation (corrected item-total correlations, 0.011). The ABILHAND-Kids score showed a statistically significant difference between the Narakas types (p < 0.001).Conclusion The ABILHAND-Kids has excellent reliability and strong validity for measuring manual ability or bimanual performance in activities of daily living in children with BPBI.