Measures of functional status in community-dwelling elders

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate two performance-based measures of functional status and assess their correlation with self-report measures. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS: Of the 363 community-dwelling elders enrolled in a trial of c omprehensive geriatric assessment who participated, all had at least one of four target conditions (urinary incontinence, depression, impaired functio nal status, or history of falling). MEASUREMENTS: Two performance-based measures, National Institute on Aging ( NIA) Battery, and Physical Performance Test (PPT), and three self-report fu nctional status measures, basic and intermediate activities of daily living and the Short-Form-36 (SF-36) physical functioning subscale, were used. Me asures of restricted activity days, patient satisfaction and perceived effi cacy mere also used. MAIN RESULTS: All measures were internally consistent. There was a high cor relation between the NIA and PPT (kappa = 0.71), while correlations between the performance-based and self-report measures ranged from 0.37 to 0.50. W hen patients with values above the median on the two performance-based meas ures were compared with those below, there were significant differences (P less than or equal to .0001) for age, number of medications, and the physic al function, pain, general health, and physical role function SF-36 subscal es. CONCLUSIONS: Performance-based measures correlated highly with each other a nd moderately with questionnaire-based measures. Performance-based measures also had construct validity and did not suffer from floor or ceiling effec ts.