Inter-rater and intra-rater agreement on the Nordic Orofacial Test—Screening examination in children, adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy. (February 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Edvinsson, Siv Elisabet; Lundqvist, Lars-Olov
• Is Part Of: Acta odontologica Scandinavica. Volume 72:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 120
• Page End: 129
• Publication Date: 2014-02
• Subjects: Dentistry -- Periodicals; 617.6005
• DOI: 10.3109/00016357.2013.810771
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0001-6357

Abstract

<abstract> <title>Abstract</title> <p> <bold> <italic>Objective.</italic> </bold> To evaluate inter-rater and intra-rater agreement on the Nordic Orofacial Test–Screening (NOT-S) examination applied to children, adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy (CP). <bold><italic>Materials and methods.</italic></bold> Using the NOT-S examination, two speech and language pathologists independently assessed video recordings of 48 subjects with CP aged 5–22 years and representing all CP sub-diagnoses and levels of gross motor function and manual ability. Thirty-one subjects were reassessed. Fifteen out of 17 items in the NOT-S examination domains (1) Face at rest, (2) Nose breathing, (3) Facial expression, (4) Masticatory muscle and jaw function, (5) Oral motor function and (6) Speech were rated using a 'yes' (dysfunction observed)/'no' format, generating an overall score of 0–6. <bold><italic>Results.</italic></bold><italic>Inter-rater agreement:</italic> Twelve out of 15 items and five out of six domains showed acceptable unweighted kappa values (<italic>κ</italic> = 0.46–1.00). The lowest kappa value was found for domain 4 (<italic>κ</italic> = −0.04), although it had high inter-rater agreement (92%). The linear weighted kappa value for the overall NOT-S examination score was 0.65 (95% CI = 0.49–0.82). <italic>Intra-rater agreement:</italic> All items and domains showed acceptable unweighted kappa values (items 0.58–1.00 and 0.59–1.00, domains 0.81–1.00 and 0.62–0.89) for both raters. The linear weighted kappa value for the overall NOT-S examination score was 0.81 (95% CI = 0.63–0.99) for rater A and 0.54 (95% CI = 0.25–0.82) for rater B. <bold><italic>Conclusions.</italic></bold> The NOT-S examination has acceptable inter-rater and intra-rater agreement when used in young individuals with CP.</p> </abstract>