Reliability of the Australian therapy outcome measures for occupational therapy self-care scale

Background and Aims: With the shift of health care towards evidence-based practice, demonstrating outcomes of intervention has become an important component of occupational therapy practice. Outcome measures and assessment procedures with sound psychometric properties are necessary to demonstrate such therapy outcomes. This study investigated the interrater and intrarater reliability of one of the 12 scales from a newly developed outcome measure, the Australian Therapy Outcome Measures for Occupational Therapy (AusTOMs-OT). Method and Results: Seven occupational therapists rated 15 written case studies on two occasions on the four domains (impairment, activity limitation, participation restriction and distress/well-being) of the AusTOMs-OT self-care scale. The results showed that the AusTOMs-OT self-care scale had moderate to high interrater reliability with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of over 0.79 for the three domains: activity limitation, participation restriction and distress/ well-being, and over 0.70 for impairment. Intrarater reliability was also reported to be moderate to high, with ICCs of 0.88 for activity limitation, 0.81 for participation restriction, 0.94 for distress/well-being, and 0.74 for impairment. Conclusion: The findings of this study support the reliability of the AusTOMs-OT self-care scale and suggest that it can be used to evaluate self-care intervention outcomes, thus contributing to the evidence-based practice of occupational therapy.