The Wheelchair Circuit: Construct validity and responsiveness of a test to assess manual wheelchair mobility in persons with spinal cord injury.

Objective: To assess the validity and responsiveness of the Wheelchair Circuit, a test to assess manual wheelchair mobility in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Design: Longitudinal. Subjects performed the Wheelchair Circuit at the start (T1) and at the end (T3) of inpatient functional rehabilitation. Construct validity and responsiveness were assessed.

Setting: Eight rehabilitation centers in the Netherlands.

Participants: Seventy-four subjects with SCI admitted for inpatient rehabilitation.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measures: The Wheelchair Circuit consists of 8 wheelchair skills and results in 3 test scores: ability, performance time, and physical strain. The construct validity of the Wheelchair Circuit was assessed by testing whether the test scores were significantly related to the subjects' functional status, physical capacity, lesion level, motor completeness of the lesion, and age. To prove the test's responsiveness, it was assessed whether the test scores had significantly improved between T1 and T3.

Results: For construct validity, 4 of the 5 hypotheses were confirmed. For test responsiveness, all 3 test scores had significantly improved during rehabilitation, and the standardized response mean values ranged from 0.6 to 0.9.

Conclusions: The Wheelchair Circuit is a valid and responsive instrument with which to measure manual wheelchair mobility in subjects with SCI.