The Community Balance and Mobility Scale - a balance measure for individuals with traumatic brain injury

Objective: To provide evidence for the validity and reliability of a new outcome measure of balance, the Community Balance and Mobility Scale, developed for the ambulatory individual with traumatic brain injury. Design: A validity and reliability study. Setting: Acute care, in- and outpatient rehabilitation and day hospital settings. Subjects: Two convenience samples (n = 36, 32) of ambulatory patients with traumatic brain injury. Main measures: The content and construct validity, test-retest, inter- and intra-rater reliability and internal consistency of the Community Balance and Mobility Scale. Results: Content validity was demonstrated by the involvement of patients with traumatic brain injury (n = 7) and clinicians (n = 17) in the process of item generation and by physical therapists' ratings of item relevance. Further support is the correlation of the Community Balance and Mobility Scale scores with physical therapists' global balance ratings of the patient (r = 0.62). Construct validity was supported by the ability of the measure to differentiate between patients along the continuum of care and also by comparisons with maximal walking velocity (r= 0.64). Patients who scored greater than or less than 50 on the balance measure demonstrated significantly different Community Integration Questionnaire scores (P = 0.004). The Community Balance and Mobility Scale demonstrated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of 0.977, 0.977, 0.975 and Cronbach's alpha of 0.96 for intra-, inter-, test-retest reliability and internal consistency, respectively. Conclusion: The Community Balance and Mobility Scale is a valid and reliable outcome measure for the ambulatory individual with traumatic brain injury.