Melfald Tveten K.1, Strand L.I.1, Dragesund T.1
1University of Bergen, Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, Bergen, Norway
Background: Reliable tools are essential when assessing motor development. Standardized tools may help to detect motor delays, and allow for early intervention. Infant Motor Profile (IMP) is a recently, developed video-based assessment tool containing the five domains; variation, adaptability, symmetry, fluency and performance. The IMP thus include more quantitative aspects of motor abilities than related assessment tools. The tool is currently available in English, a Norwegian version is, however, desirable in order to use in clinical practice in Norway.
Purpose: To translate the Infant Motor Profile (IMP) into Norwegian (IMP-NV) and explore its intra-rater reliability assessed by a physiotherapist.
Methods: The IMP was translated according to principles of the Committee for Translation and protocols of the International RDC/TMD Consortium Network. IMP was administered on 61 infants (34 females, 27 males) age 3-12 months. 20 of the infants were at risk of motor developmental delay, while 41 infants were typically developing. The assessor had attended a two-day course in Infant Motor Profile and the assessments were performed with an eight weeks interval.
Results: Strong correlation was found for total IMP score (ICC= 0,925. 95% CI 0,878-0,954), variation (ICC = 0, 766. 95 % CI 0,693-0,853) and the domain of performance (ICC = 0,970. 95% CI 0,951-0,982) Moderate results were found for the domain symmetry (ICC = 0,730. 95% CI 0,588-0,829) and fluency (ICC= 0,684. 95 % CI 0,523-0,798). The weakest correlation was found for the domain adaptability (ICC = 0,304. 95% CI 0,02-0,575).
Conclusion(s): The content of the IMP fills a gap in the assessment of infants as the tool emphasizes not only on motor performance, but also the quality of the movement and the variation in the motor repertoire. Difficulties in assessing adaptability may be due to the construction of the scale, or the need of a certain amount of experience by the rater. A Norm reference for the IMP is urgent, and is a current project running in Norway.
Implications: Using IMP in clinical practice is reliable when used by a physiotherapist with a two days course. The test is feasible due to the short time to administer and few requirements regarding equipment to conduct the test. As some of the domains may be difficult to assess, we would thus recommend an experience of assessing 50 infants before use in clinical practice.
Funding acknowledgements: The study was supported by the fund for Post-Graduate training in Physiotherapy
Topic: Human movement analysis
Ethics approval: The study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Etichs, Western Norway (2015/1501/REK vest)
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
