The Parkinson's Disease Activities of Daily Living Scale: a new simple and brief subjective measure of disability in Parkinson's disease

Objective: To develop a brief, valid and reliable self-report scale for the assessment of activities of daily living in Parkinson's disease (PD). Design: Self-report questionnaire development. Subjects: One hundred and seventy subjects with a diagnosis of clinically probable PD living in the community. Measures: The self-rating scale - Parkinson's Disease Activities of Daily Living Scale (PADLS), Webster Scale, CAMCOG neuropsychological test, 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) and the serf-rated Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life (PDQL) questionnaire. Methods: The PADLS was initially validated and test-retest reliability assessed in a group of PD patients (n = 38). Next a convenience sample of 132 patients was drawn from a community-based PD register. Subjects were invited to complete the PADLS, PDQL, GDS-15, Webster scale and CAMCOG test. Results: The PADLS correlated significantly with increasing age, duration of illness, disease severity, increasing depression, impaired cognition and poorer health-related quality of life. Conclusion: The PADLS was found to be a reliable and valid measure of ADL, demonstrating acceptable internal consistency and strong associations with existing measurers of disease severity, depression, cognitive screening and health-related quality of life. The PADLS allows patients to subjectively report the impact that PD has upon daily activities and will complement existing formal clinical measures in PD.