Mobility rating scale for elderly people with dementia: preparation of a Japanese-language version of the Southampton Mobility Assessment

Objectives

Improving the mobility of elderly people with dementia appears to be of significant value in maintaining and enhancing their activities of daily living and quality of life. However, a literature search revealed no scales for rating the mobility of elderly people with dementia currently available in Japan. A Japanese-language version of a rating scale for the mobility of elderly people with dementia, the Southampton Mobility Assessment (SMA), was prepared and its reliability and validity were evaluated.

Participants

Eighty-five elderly people with dementia.

Methods

Reliability was assessed using limits of agreement based on the analysis by Bland and Altman. Validity was evaluated using Spearman's rank correlation coefficients to assess associations between the scores on the Japanese-language version of the SMA and the scores on the subscales of the Barthel Index.

Results

The limits of agreement between two raters were −1.2 and 1.2, and the evaluation of repeatability revealed that 98% of the differences were within two standard deviations (−0.3 and 0.3). A high correlation was found between the scores on the Japanese-language version of the SMA and the Barthel Index.

Conclusions

These results demonstrate that the Japanese-language version of the SMA possesses high reliability and validity, suggesting its suitability in the assessment of mobility when developing physiotherapy approaches intended to enhance the mobility and quality of life of elderly people with dementia.