Background: The QuickDASH, an abbreviated form of the Disabilities
of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand Questionnaire, uses a graded-adjectives ordinal
measurement response scale. In order to improve the sensitivity of the measure
and to make it compatible with widely used measures of pain and disability, a
visual analog scale version was developed. The present study investigated the
reliability of the new version over time when used for the evaluation of
patients undergoing treatment.
Methods: A test-retest model with a two-day interval was used to
evaluate a sample of thirty-eight consecutive patients in an interdisciplinary
tertiary rehabilitation setting who were identified as having an upper
extremity disorder.
Results: The intraclass correlation coefficient indicating
test-retest reliability was 0.90 for the eleven-item QuickDASH visual analog
scale questionnaire (without the work component) and 0.94 for the fifteen-item
questionnaire (with the work component), neither of which was significantly
different from the results reported for the original questionnaire.
Conclusions: The QuickDASH visual analog scale questionnaire has
acceptable reliability over time, and it can be used as an alternative to the
original QuickDASH.