• Assesses the capacity of children with SCI who use a manual wheelchair. It is a clinician-administered and performance-based to measure the children’s mobility and Activities of Daily Living (ADL).
  • Tasks include:
    1) Donning a shirt
    2) Donning sweat pants
    3) Performance of even transfers
    4) Performance of uneven transfers (4 inch height difference)
    5) Wheelchair propulsion on even surfaces
    6) Wheelchair performance up a ramp.

Clinical Considerations

  • The TMT includes common ADL tasks for children with SCI
  • The objective scale (time in seconds) is useful to detect change
  • The client/clinician burden in completing the test is considerable

ICF Domain

Activity ▶ Mobility

Administration

  • Clinician-administered; performance-based measure
  • The individual completes each task 5 times, except for wheelchair skills which is only done 3 times. Participants are instructed to complete the task quickly but safely.
  • If they are unsuccessful in completing the task, they can retry it. If they are not able to complete all 5 trials, or if the individual requires more than 20 seconds to complete the task, then no time is reported- it is considered “incomplete”.
  • Administration time is usually 60-90 minutes (time is required for instruction and rest times are given between trials).

Number of Items

6

Equipment

  • An adjustable mat (dimensions not specified)
  • An 80 foot (24.3 m) corridor
  • A 45 foot (13.72 m) ramp with an 8 degree angle

Scoring

  • Time (seconds) to complete each task is recorded
  • Based on the results of the reliability data, it was decided to use the mean score of the fastest 3 trials for scoring each task.

Languages

English

Training Required

Does not require advanced training.

Availability

Can be found by contacting the author (Ross Chafetz, rchafetz@shrinenet.org).

Measurement Property Summary

Number of studies reporting psychometric properties: 1

Interpretability

  • More time required to complete each task indicates a lower capacity to perform ADL
  • No norms or meaningful cut-points have been established for the SCI population.
  • MCID: not established for SCI
  • SEM: not established for SCI
  • MDC: not established for SCI

Reliability – Low to High

Number of studies reporting reliability data: 1

  • Low to High test-retest reliability of TMT items: ICC = 0.30 – donning pants to ICC = 0.92 – wheelchair propulsion down the hall
  • Moderate to High intra-rater reliability for videotaped sessions: ICC = 0.73-0.95
  • Moderate to High inter-rater reliability for videotaped sessions: ICC = 0.71-0.95

(Chafetz et al. 2004; n=11; 6 males; 5 females; mean (SD) age: 9.6 (3.5) years, children’s hospital; thoracic SCI; no info on chronicity)

Validity

Number of studies reporting validity data: 1

Groups with and without thoracolumbosacral orthoses have significantly different TMT scores for 5 of 6 items (all but ‘Propelling Up a Ramp’).

(Chafetz et al. 2004; n=11; 6 males; 5 females; mean (SD) age: 9.6 (3.5) years, children’s hospital; thoracic SCI; no info on chronicity)

Responsiveness

No values were reported for the responsiveness of the TMT for the SCI population.

Floor/Ceiling Effect

No values were reported for the presence of floor/ceiling effects in the TMT for the SCI population.

Reviewers

Dr. Carlos L. Cano-Herrera, Tyra Chu

Date Last Updated

December 31, 2024

Chafetz R, McDonald C, Mulcahey MJ, Betz R, Anderson C, Vogel L, Gaughan JP, Martin S, O’Dell MA, Flanagan A. Timed motor test for wheelchair users: initial development and application in children with spinal cord injury. J SCI Med 2004;27:S38-43.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15503701

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