Purpose: Although activities of daily living (ADL) are widely used as an index for evaluating rehabilitation, there is no ADL evaluation index for low-vision individuals in Japan. The present study aimed to develop an ADL evaluation index for low-vision individuals.
Subjects and methods: We gathered data from literature reported within and outside of Japan on ADL measurement in low-vision individuals as well as questionnaires in similar fields. We compared the data with the content of "activities" in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to come up with a provisional index comprising 28 items related to "daily vision function" and 9 items related to "daily life activities." We used the provisional index to survey 186 low-vision individuals and then performed Rasch analysis. After performing Rasch analysis on each item during the scoring stage, we calculated the item difficulty and goodness-of-fit statistics for each parameter to determine the goodness-of-fit with the Rasch model. We also calculated converted values to create an interval scale of 0-100 points.
Results: Rasch analysis indicated that the scoring stage comprised 3 stages for the daily vision function parameters and 4 stages for the daily life activity parameters. After excluding items that did not fit the Rasch model, the evaluation index comprised 22 daily vision function items and 9 daily life activity items.
Conclusion: We successfully developed the low-vision-specific function and ADL measure (LVFAM) to perform evaluations based on the two stages of daily vision function and daily life activities.
Nippon Ganka Gakkai Zasshi (J Jpn Ophthalmol Soc) 124: 783-793, 2020.