Manual wheelchair skills capacity versus performance.

OBJECTIVES To test the hypotheses that self-reported manual wheelchair skills capacity and performance are highly correlated and that capacity significantly exceeds performance. DESIGN Cross-sectional. SETTING Rehabilitation center. PARTICIPANTS Manual wheelchair users (N=26) with a variety of diagnoses and an average of 10.8 years of wheelchair experience. INTERVENTIONS None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE We administered the questionnaire version of the Wheelchair Skills Test version 4.1 (WST-Q), recording the participants' capacity and performance scores on each of 32 skills. RESULTS The mean total WST-Q capacity and performance scores ± SD were 72.5%±19.2% and 58.1%±21.2%. The Spearman rho correlation coefficient between total WST-Q capacity and performance scores was .853 (P=.000). The mean difference ± SD in total WST-Q scores (capacity minus performance) was 14.4%±9.5% with a median of 10.9% (P=.000 on a Wilcoxon signed-rank test). There were 9 (28%) of the 32 skills for which the participants' mean capacity success rates were ≥20% higher than the mean performance success rates. Of the reasons for not performing individual skills, 66% of the instances were because the participant lacked the capacity. A variety of other reasons were given by participants for not performing skills of which they were capable (eg, the situation was not encountered, it could be avoided, or assistance was usually available). CONCLUSIONS Manual wheelchair skills capacity and performance are highly correlated but capacity exceeds performance, more so for some skills than others. Although further study is needed, these findings have implications for the assessment and training of wheelchair skills.