Development of Gait Ability Assessment for hemiplegics (GAA) and verification of inter-rater reliability and validity

Tomida K, Tanino G, Sonoda S, Hirano S, Itoh N, Saitoh E, Kagaya H, Suzuki A, Kawakami K, Miyajima T, Takai M. Development of Gait Ability Assessment for hemiplegics (GAA) and verification of inter-rater reliability and validity. Jpn J Compr Rehabil Sci 2021; 12: 19-26. Objective: To develop the Gait Ability Assessment for hemiplegics (GAA), and to verify its validity and inter-rater reliability. Methods: We developed the GAA, a new method for the assessment of gait ability. Next, we examined the inter-rater reliability of GAA by assessing gait ability of post-stroke patients by two physical therapists. Then, we verified the validity of GAA by comparing with the existing assessments methods comprising Functional Ambulation Categories (FAC), Functional Independence Measure (FIM)-walk, maximum walking speed, motor subscore of the FIM (FIM-M), and total score of affected-side motor function of the Stroke Impairment Assessment Set (SIAS-L/E). Conclusion: GAA has high inter-rater reliability as well as high validity as a gait ability assessment method, suggesting that it can be applied to research and clinical settings.