| Purpose Parkinson disease (PD) is one of the common
causes of imbalance, and the balance assessment is necessary
for treatment and rehabilitation of these patients.
The Berg Balance Scale (BBS) has been the main instrument
used to evaluate balance impairment. The purpose of
this study is to investigate reliability and validity of the
Persian translation of BBS in Parkinson disease.
Methods One hundred PD patients (with mean age of
56.8 ± 15.13 years) were included. Interrater reliability
was measured with the Kappa statistics and interclass
correlation coefficients.
Results The mean values of the BBS scored by the two
evaluators were 47/85 ± 11/09 and 48/03 ± 10/90,
respectively. The mean of Kappa coefficient between two
examiners was 0.76, which was between 0.38 and 0.93 for
various items. The total score recorded by both examiners,
interclass correlation coefficient, was 0.99, which is
excellent. Cronbach’s alpha for Iranian version of BBS was
0.92, which shows the excellent reliability of the questionnaire
(0.62–0.9 for all items).
Conclusion The Persian version of the BBS has excellent
interrater reliability and internal consistency for the
assessment of PD patients. |