Inter-rater Reliability of Infant Motor Profile in 3–24-Month-Old High-Risk Infants: Turkey Sample

Objective: Assessment of high-risk infants is critical for setting early physiotherapy needs and evaluating the effects of clinical practices. The aim of this study was to analyze the inter-rater reliability of the infant motor profile (IMP) performed on high-risk infants with different risk factors. Material and Methods: IMP videos of 47 infants (18 female and 29 male) with an average corrected age of 10.13±5.13 months were recorded. There were 56 videos in total; three pediatric physiotherapists scored five domains, namely variation, variability, symmetry, fluency, and performance. Spearman Correlation Analysis was used to evaluate the inter-rater reliability. Results: Considering the Spearman values for the inter-rater reliability, it was found that the values ranged between low (r=0.467) and very high (r=0.941). The highest reliability was very high (r= 0.898–0.929) for the domain of performance, and the lowest reliability was low-high (r=0.467–0.735) for the symmetry domain. The results of inter-rater reliability were acceptable for the IMP total score and all the domain scores in this study. Conclusion: These results show that the use of IMP by physiotherapists for the assessment of 3-24-month-old high-risk infants is reliable. We recommend that it be used in our country in determining early physiotherapy needs. © 2020 The authors.