Reliability and validity of the manual function test in patients with stroke

Miyamoto S, Kondo T, Suzukamo Y, Michimata A, Izumi S-I: Reliability and validity of the manual function test in patients with stroke. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2009;88:247-255. Objective: The Manual Function test (MFT) is an upper-limb function assessment measure for hemiparetic patients after stroke. This study represents the reliability and validity of the MFT. Design: Ninety patients within half a year after stroke onset were hospitalized from August 2005 through November 2006. Test-retest reliability, interrater reliability, and internal consistency reliability of MFT were investigated. Validity of the MFT was evaluated with the Brunnstrom Stage, the Stroke Impairment Assessment Set, and the Barthel Index. Results: The test-retest reliability coefficient and interrater reliability of the MFT were consistently above 0.95. Cronbach's α coefficient as internal consistency of eight items was also 0.95. With respect to the validity of the MFT, it had a correlation of >0.8 with both the Brunnstrom Stage and the Stroke Impairment Assessment Set. The correlation among task items within each category was also high. There was a higher correlation (p = 0.647) between the MFT and Barthel Index. Among the Barthel Index items, "dressing" had the highest correlation with the MFT, which indicates that upper-limb functions and degree of independence in dressing are highly correlated. Conclusions: It was concluded that the MFT offers reliable and valid methods for assessing for upper-limb functional disorders.