Classification of Functioning, Disa

Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is gaining recognition in physical therapy. The Extended ICF Core Set for Stroke is a practical tool that represents a selection of categories from the whole classification and can be used along with the ICF qualifier scale to describe patients’ functioning and disability following stroke. The application of the ICF qualifier scale poses the question of interrater reliability. The primary objective of this investigation was to study the agreement between physical therapists’ ratings of subjects’ functioning and disability with the Extended ICF Core Set for Stroke and with the ICF qualifier scale. Further objectives were to explore the relationships between agreement and rater confi- dence and between agreement and physical therapists’ areas of core competence.
Subjects and Methods. A monocentric, cross-sectional reliability study was conducted. A consecutive sample of 30 subjects after stroke participated. Two physical therapists rated the subjects’ functioning in 166 ICF categories.
Results. The interrater agreement of the 2 physical therapists was moderate across all judgments (observed agreement