Interrater agreement and stability of the Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM): use in children with developmental disabilities

OBJECTIVE: Examination of the interrater agreement and stability of ratings obtained using the Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM) in a sample of children with developmental disabilities. DESIGN: A relational design was used in which two sets of WeeFIM scores were collected under four conditions: same rater-short interval; same rater-long interval; different rater-short interval; and different rater-long interval. SETTING: WeeFIM scores were collected in outpatient developmental rehabilitation centers, school programs, and the children's homes. PARTICIPANTS: Data were collected for 205 children ranging in age from 11 to 87 months. All children had a medical diagnosis of disability and were receiving habilitative-educational intervention or follow-along services including neurodevelopmental surveillance. INSTRUMENT: The WeeFIM instrument examines basic daily living and functional skills in children from birth to 7 years of age. The WeeFIM is modeled after the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) for adults and includes 18 items in the following subscales: self-care, sphincter control, transfers, locomotion, communication, and social cognition. RESULTS: Kappa values for items ranged from .44 to .82. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for the six subscales ranged from .73 to .98. Total WeeFIM ICC values were greater than .95 for all analyses. CONCLUSIONS: The WeeFIM ratings for the 205 children with developmental disabilities participating in this investigation were consistent across raters and time.