The utility of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health checklist for evaluating disability in a community-dwelling geriatric population sample.

The aim of this study was to investigate disability in community-dwelling individuals aged 65 years and over using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) checklist and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS-II) and to compare how these two ICF-based instruments measured disability in an attempt to show the utility of the ICF checklist in a field setting to describe disability. In this population-based, cross-sectional and descriptive study, data on the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II were collected from 200 selected participants who lived in a small town. Both the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II identified a considerable proportion of the elderly with a disability in life areas relevant to cognition and domestic life in a similar manner, the proportions ranging from 52.5 to 68.5%. However, the proportions of those with a disability showed a statistically significant difference in the domains of the two instruments relevant to mobility, self-care, and participation in society. Although the absolute intrarater agreement for matching items of the instruments ranged from 40.5 to 87.5%, kappa statistics showed slight to moderate agreement for the original ICF qualifier and mostly moderate agreement with reduced response options. ICF qualifiers were found to discriminate between the WHODAS-II domain scores in those with no, mild-moderate and severe-complete difficulty. The disparity between the data obtained from the ICF checklist and the WHODAS-II in some domains may have resulted from differing interpretations of the items of the ICF checklist, lower reliability of some of the items, and the current feature of the qualifiers used without any adaptations. The ICF checklist has the potential to be used in a field setting, provided that some modifications are made.