The Nordic Housing Enabler: inter-rater reliability in cross-nordic occupational therapy practice

This study addresses development of a content valid cross-Nordic version of the Housing Enabler and investigation of its inter-rater reliability when used in occupational therapy rating situations, involving occupational therapists, clients and their home environments. The instrument was translated from the original Swedish version of the Housing Enabler, and adapted according to accessibility norms and guidelines for housing design in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. This iterative process involved occupational therapists, architects, building engineers and professional translators, resulting in the Nordic Housing Enabler. For reliability testing, the sampling strategy and data collection procedures used were the same in all countries. Twenty voluntary occupational therapists, pair-wise but independently from each other, collected data from 106 cases by means of the Nordic Housing Enabler. Inter-rater reliability was calculated by means of percentage agreement and kappa statistics. Overall good percentage agreement for the personal and environmental components of the instrument was shown, indicating that the instrument was sufficiently reliable for application in practice and research in the Nordic context. The varying kappa results highlights the need for further study in order to understand the influence of prevalence more profoundly, which should be kept in mind when interpreting the results.
Keywords: Accessibility, physical environment, housing adaptation, occupational therapy, translation.