Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the occupational therapy diagnosis

A registration form based on the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps (ICIDH) was developed and its reliability as a registration of occupational therapy (OT) diagnosis was assessed. Fifty patients from a psychiatric hospital and 57 patients from a rehabilitation center participated in this study. Reliability was determined using two measures: the percentage of agreement and Cohen's kappa. Findings of this study indicate that the reliability of the assessments of functional deficits of the patients by occupational therapists is satisfactory to very good. In the rehabilitation center all items, and in the psychiatric hospital 88% of the items, had a kappa value higher than .45. This implies that the registration form can be used in survey research.