The development of a handicap assessment questionnaire: the Impact on Participation and Autonomy (IPA)

Objective: To report on the feasibility and psychometric properties in terms of homogeneity and construct validity of a newly developed handicap questionnaire focusing on person-perceived handicaps: the Impact on Participation and Autonomy (IPA). Design: Cross-sectional. Setting, subjects and outcome measure: One hundred consecutive individuals from the outpatient clinic of the department of rehabilitation of an academic hospital administered the new questionnaire IPA. Results: The results show good homogeneity and construct validity of the IPA. Factor analysis showed that the scale consists of four factors, explaining 68% of the total variance: social relationships, autonomy in self-care, mobility and leisure, and family role. Homogeneity of the four subscales was considered good, Cronbach's α ranged from 0.84 (family role) to 0.87 (social relationships). Feasibility in terms of the number of missing values and administration time needed was satisfactory. Conclusion: The first results suggest that the IPA promises to be a useful handicap questionnaire. Further research is needed to establish test–retest reliability, convergent validity and responsiveness to change.