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Frances George has article published in Pediatric Physical Therapy

Development and Content Validity of the Clinical Assessment of Body Alignment for Children With Cerebral Palsy

20 April 2020

The article to which France K. George contributed, Development and Content Validity of the Clinical Assessment of Body Alignment for Children With Cerebral Palsy, has been published in Pediatric Physical Therapy in Vol. 32, No. 2, April 2020.

Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to describe the development and content validity of the clinical assessment of body alignment (CABA) to measure body alignment in children with cerebral palsy.

Methods: Content validity and clinical utility were examined through expert opinion of 283 pediatric physical therapists. Participants reviewed items as matching or not to the domain of body alignment. Clinical utility was evaluated on a 5-point scale. Means and standard deviation were calculated for each attribute. Fleiss' kappa examined interrater reliability of expert responses.

Results: Percentage agreement was high for 19 items and good for 1 item. Clinicians' ratings showed overall fair to good agreement. Four clinical utility attributes had a net importance score of more than 90%, although interrater reliability was low.

Conclusion: Content validity of the CABA was supported. Construct validity, reliability, and responsiveness require further study. What this adds to the evidence: The CABA has potential to offer clinicians and researchers a clinically practical measure of postural alignment for children with cerebral palsy. Preliminary investigation of CABA shows good content validity. However, more studies to assess the assessments' psychometrics including construct validity, reliability, and responsiveness are required.

The article was also selected to feature in the Journal's podcast and short interview which can be found, on the links below:

Podcast:

The study, discussed by Frances K. George in Pediatric Physical Therapy podcast, investigated the first steps in psychometric testing of the Clinical Assessment of Body Alignment to measure body alignment in children with cerebral palsy.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/pptpodcast/200310_PPT_32.2_Podcast_PRODUCTION_MASTER.mp3

Frances George interview plays from 29:50

YouTube video which shows how this research related to clinical practice:

The clip is now live at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGrXe9LDOaU