Abstract:

Objective: To determine the reliability and validity of North Star Ambulatory Assessment (NSAA).Methods: Inclusion criteria: Children diagnosed by gene detection or muscle biopsy as DMD and accepted functional assessment in Childeren's Hospital of Fudan University from January 2014 to January 2016,being able to walk more than ten meters independently,and in addition ,without severe cognitive retardation were recruited. Twenty patients were scored by two different physical therapeutists at the same time to detect inter-rater reliability. Sixteen patients were scored the second time 3-7 days after the first assessment by the same physical therapeutist to detect test-retest reliability.Relate ageneral category encording way of International Classification of Functioning，Disability and Health-Child and Youth version(ICF-CY) and project concept of NSAA were used to determine content validity of NSAA. Criterion related validity analysis was performed by analyzing the correlation between NSAA scores of 143 children and 6 minutes walking distance(6MWT).Results: The reliability analysis of the different test results of two therapists on twenty children showed that the NSAA raw scores and linear scores had excellent inter-rater reliability（ICC=0.96，0.97）; 16 boys were assessed by the same therapeutist twice with an interval of 3~7 days and the results showed that raw and linear scores of NSAA had great test-retest reliability（ICC=0.96）;Twenty linkages were made between seventeen items of NSAA and eight codes of ICY-CY,all of the eight codes belonged to d4(mobility), which meant that contents of NSAA evaluation mainly focused on mobility of DMD patients.The NSAA raw scores and linear scores of all 143 boys and 6MWT, had a fair degree of relationship between the two measures(r=0.40 and r=0.38).Conclusion: Chinese version of NSAA has good psychometric properties in test-retest reliability and inter-rater reliability in both raw and linear scores. Combined with other measurements, NSAA may effectively evaluate the activity of the patients with DMD in China.