Test-retest reliability of three life balance measures in people with neuromuscular disease: the activity card sort-NL, the activity calculator, and the occupational balance questionnaire.

Purpose: Life balance is a new and important concept in occupational therapy. New measurements are needed to assess and evaluate life balance and interventions aimed to achieve this concept. This article describes the test-retest reliability of three life balance measures: the Activity Calculator (AC), Activity Card Sort (ACS-NL(18-64)) and Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ11-NL). Method: Data collection took place among 50 participants with neuromuscular diseases: facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD, n  = 25) or mitochondrial myopathy (MM, n  = 25). The AC, the ACS-NL(18-64) and the OBQ11-NL were assessed twice with an interval of one week. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC-agreement) were applied to examine test-retest reliability. Results: The ICC of the AC-average total day score was .95 (95% CI .91-.97), whereas the ICC of the weights allocated to each activity was 0.80 (95% CI .77-0.82). The ICC of the ACS-NL(18-64) percentage retained activities was 0.92 (95% CI 0.86 - 0.96) and the ICC of the importance score per activity was- .76 (95% CI . 0.68-0.89). The ICC of the OBQ11-NL total score was .76 (95% CI 0.62-0.86). Conclusion: All three tools showed good to excellent test-retest reliability in a sample of patients with FSHD or MM, which is promising for its use in clinical practice and research.