Performance-based assessment of activities of daily living (ADL) ability among women with chronic widespread pain

Functional ability, including the ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL), is considered a core outcome domain in chronic pain clinical trials and is usually assessed through generic or disease-specific self-report questionnaires. Research, however, indicates that self-report and performance-based assessment of ADL offer distinct but complementary information about ability. The present study, therefore, investigated the applicability of a performance-based measure of ADL ability, the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS), among 50 women with chronic widespread pain. The investigated psychometric properties of the AMPS included discrimination between a sample of healthy women and those with chronic widespread pain, as well as stability when no intervention was provided and sensitivity to change following intervention. Data were obtained based on a repeated measures design performing AMPS evaluations twice pre- and twice post-rehabilitation. Results indicated that the ADL motor ability measures of the participants were significantly lower than those of healthy women of same age, the ADL motor and ADL process ability measures remained stable when no intervention was provided and the ADL motor ability measures were sensitive to change following a 2-week interdisciplinary rehabilitation program. A weak correlation ( r s = −0.35) was found between self-reported ADL ability as measured by the physical function subscale of the Functional Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) and performance-based ADL motor measures, and no correlation ( r s = −0.02) was found between FIQ ADL measures and ADL process ability, supporting the need for both performance-based and self-reported assessment of ADL.