Introduction: Upper extremity (UE) hemiparesis-related functional loss affects occupational performance. Common UE assessments don’t accurately assess bilateral UE integration in a functional context. The Bilateral Task Assessment (BTA) was created to address this gap while addressing clinical constraints like time to administer and is comprised of five tasks.
Objectives:
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Describe limitations of common upper extremity assessments and explain the significance of evaluating bilateral integration.
- Summarize the initial psychometric properties of the Bilateral Task Assessment that support its clinical use.
- Discuss how the Bilateral Task Assessment can be integrated into practice to enhance functional assessment and improve occupational performance outcomes.
Methods: The BTA was administered to 3,962 individuals during inpatient rehabilitation (41.57% female; average age 59.83). Psychometric evaluation included analyses of reliability, validity, dimensionality, and test difficulty. Additionally, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), standard error of measurement (SEM), and minimal detectable change (MDC) were calculated to assess test reliability and precision.
Results: The BTA demonstrated strong internal consistency overall. Factor analysis revealed a large effect size for task scores and a moderate effect size for time. The intraclass ICC was 0.91, indicating excellent reliability. Measurement precision yielded a SEM of 1.37 and MDC of 3.80. Concurrent validity analysis identified significant correlations with other UE measures, further supporting clinical utility.
Conclusion: This study determined that the BTA demonstrated strong psychometric properties and can be widely used within rehabilitation to assess bilateral integration. The BTA is a valid and consistent measure that can promote BUE integration functional assessment and strengthens occupational therapy practitioners ability to integrate consistent standardized assessment in practice.