Measurement of the influence of secondary conditions upon the participation in activities of daily living in the community for people with mobility impairments

A project funded by the Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) had the objectives to increase health knowledge and healthy behaviors, improve health screening and medical assessments, and decrease the number and severity of secondary conditions experienced by people with mobility impairments. As a part of this project, participants were asked the prevalence of nineteen secondary conditions associated with their condition and to indicate how each condition limited their participation in daily activities. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss three methods to develop a measure of the influence of secondary conditions as related to participation in daily activities. The first two methods used the data from the initial interview of 61 participants of the MFH study. One method was to use Principal Components to provide a factor score. The other method was to use Rasch Analysis to determine a participation score. The third method used the information from several focus groups. The participants of the groups were asked to rank order the nineteen secondary conditions as to how the condition limits participation. From these ranks, coefficients of a linear function to compute a participation score were determined. The presentation will discuss the results of three methods and their utility to measure the influence of secondary conditions on participation in daily activities of people with mobility limitations.