Barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice post-stroke: development and content validity of a new instrument.

Purpose: To develop a new instrument to identify barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice post-stroke and test its content validity. Materials and methods: The sample consisted of individuals with stroke and neurological rehabilitation professionals. The study consisted of two steps: (1) Instrument development, involving three processes; a data search in the literature, interviews with the target population and an open questionnaire (online) sent to professionals; and (2) Testing the content validity of the instrument by asking individuals with stroke and professionals about the comprehensiveness and relevance of the items and additionally asking individuals with stroke about the comprehensibility of the items. For each item in the instrument, the threshold validity scores were ≥0.80 in the Content Validity Index and ≥0.75 for the Kappa agreement. Results: The preliminary version was developed with 46 items. The content validation was performed in three rounds. The last version of the instrument Barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice post-stroke (BASH-TOP-Stroke) contained 34 items in five response categories, in which the higher the value presented, the greater the number of barriers. The content validity for the items was excellent. Conclusions: The study provides a new instrument to help identify barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice post-stroke. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION: Barriers to self-administered task-oriented home-based exercises can be specific to this form of practice. Understanding barriers to self-administered task-oriented home-based exercises is essential to increase the amount of practice for optimizing motor recovery. The Barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice post-stroke (BASH-TOP-Stroke) questionnaire was developed to evaluate barriers to self-administered task-oriented home-based exercises in individuals post-stroke. BASH-TOP-Stroke has excellent content validity based on patients and professionals and could help to identify strategies that may reduce barriers to self-administered home-based task-oriented practice after stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]