Reliability and validity of the self-reported Activities of Daily Living Scale for people with mental illness.
Ay-Woan Pan, Chao-Yi Wu, LyInn Chung and 1 others
PMID 30643499WHAT IT FOUND
A shortened self-reported daily living scale appears to classify people with mental illness into four independence levels.
It was not tested in severe illness, and six original items were dropped.
Key findings
01Six original items were removed, and the remaining 14 items fit well enough to define four independence levels.
02Sleep and child raising were the hardest activities, while shopping and medication were the easiest.
03No item showed bias between patients and controls, but the scale had a ceiling effect and was too easy unless the person was very ill.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The analysed count is 475, but the demographic table reports 455, and the paper does not explain the discrepancy. The sample did not include acute stage patients or people with more severe functional deterioration. The scale had a ceiling effect and was too easy unless the person was very ill, so it may not discriminate well among people who are not very ill. The items did not fully meet the single-ability criteria, although the authors accepted them on theoretical grounds. The control group was recruited from colleges, with mean age 21.59; the patient group had mean age 46.42. The scale rates overall difficulty, not specific task steps, so it does not identify specific deficits in task performance. The final 14-item scale was created by deleting six items and collapsing categories, so it differs from the original sf-ADLS.
Declared interests
The paper lists the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan as funder. The supplied text does not report other author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as a validated scale for all people with mental illness. The final 14-item version was created after removing six items and collapsing rating categories, and the sample did not include acute or more severe cases.