A Standardised Car Seat Transfer Test: Reliability and Concurrent Validity.
Tarcisio F de Campos, Mitchell Wolden, Marie K March and 8 others
PMID 40692759WHAT IT FOUND
A timed car seat transfer test gave consistent times in 42 healthy adults aged 50 or older when two raters scored the same person and when the same person was retested after 7 days.
Simulator times closely matched vehicle times, but were faster.
Key findings
01Two blinded researchers produced excellent agreement for transfer times on both the vehicle and the simulator.
02Test-retest agreement after 7 days was good to excellent for transfer times on the vehicle and the simulator.
03Simulator transfer times were strongly correlated with vehicle transfer times, but were significantly shorter.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study included only healthy adults aged 50 or older who could already get in and out of a car seat independently, and it excluded people with hip or knee osteoarthritis, hip or knee replacement, musculoskeletal, neurological or cardiovascular conditions, psychiatric disorders, or BMI over 35. So it does not show how the test performs in patients with mobility problems. The test did not include opening and closing a car door or putting on and taking off a seat belt, so it does not capture the full real-world transfer task. The sample size was based on an assumed reliability estimate of 0.60 because there were no prior pilot data or published values, so the reliability results need confirmation in patient groups. The simulator was faster than the vehicle, so exact seconds may not be interchangeable between the two setups. Data from 42 participants were analysed in a hospital setting, so the results may not apply to other services.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat a simulator transfer time as an exact substitute for a real car transfer time in people with hip, knee, neurological or cardiovascular problems. The simulator was faster, and the study included only healthy adults aged 50 or older who could already transfer independently.