Reliability of a United States Version of the Nottingham Sensory Assessment

Many stroke survivors experience somatosensory deficits and there is currently no “gold standard” reliable standardized assessment commonly used by clinicians in the United States. In the present study, the authors modified the Nottingham Sensory Assessment (NSA) into a U.S. version to provide therapists with a standardized multimodal sensory assessment for use with clients post-stroke. Six licensed rehabilitation practitioners and one occupational therapy student administered the United States-NSA (US-NSA) on 17 older adults with chronic stroke (i.e., at least six months post-stroke) to evaluate its inter-rater reliability. The authors used an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to analyze the inter-rater reliability of the data. The findings indicate strong agreement for all test items, except for the Sharp-Dull Discrimination item when tested on the lower extremity. The US-NSA is a promising sensory impairment assessment available for use by U.S. occupational therapists and other rehabilitation professionals to use in intervention planning, measuring outcomes, and quality of care