Establishment and validation of a new assessment scale for Kennedy's disease / 中华神经科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To develop a scale to assess Kennedy's disease (KD) based on patients' clinical characteristics and to validate its application in patients.Methods We developed KD1234 Scale following the model of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Functional Rating Scale.Using this new scale,we assessed patients with genetic diagnosis of KD and evaluated the reliability and validity of the new scale.Reliability was analyzed using Cronbach' s α coefficient and split-half reliability.Validity was analyzed by content validity and structure validity.Results The Cronbach' s α coefficient of the total scale was 0.789 and split-half reliability coefficient was 0.868.The α of breathing with total score was 0.3-0.4,α of written,language and swallowing with the total score was 0.4-0.5,α of other items with the total score was ＞ 0.5 (P ＜ 0.01 in each of above α).Four common factors extracted by exploratory factor analysis had well correspondence between the scale construction and the theoretical construction.Factor loading was ranged from 0.541 to 0.864 for each item.The duration of the disease showed some correlation with the score of KD1234 Scale.Conclusions The KD1234 Scale demonstrates high reliability and validity.The duration of the disease indicates negative correlation with KD1234 Scale scores.The KD1234 Scale can be used in clinical research to evaluate the condition of KD patients quantitatively.