The Vienna Frailty Questionnaire For Persons with Intellectual Disabilities--Revised.
A short staff checklist reliably measures frailty in adults with ID so you can act before health spirals.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Carretti et al. (2013) tested a revised frailty checklist for adults with intellectual disability.
The team asked 53 staff pairs to rate the same the adults with ID. They repeated the ratings two weeks later.
They wanted to know if the new VFQ-ID-R gives steady scores across raters and time.
What they found
The questionnaire scored 0.94 for internal consistency—items hang together well.
Inter-rater agreement was 0.77 and test-retest was 0.87, both in the good range.
In plain words: different staff see the same client almost the same way, and scores stay stable.
How this fits with other research
Oliver et al. (2002) and English et al. (1995) tested mental-health screeners for adults with ID. They also found good total-score reliability, yet single-item agreement was only fair. Barbara’s frailty tool keeps the same pattern: total score is solid, item-level noise is low.
Fujiura (2012) argues we should let clients speak for themselves when possible. The VFQ-ID-R uses staff report, not self-report, so it follows a proxy model. The two papers do not clash—they answer different questions: T asks “Can the person answer?” while Barbara asks “Do staff agree?”
Amaral et al. (2017) show adults with ID die almost 20 years early from treatable causes. A quick, reliable frailty screen like the VFQ-ID-R gives teams a way to flag early decline and act sooner.
Why it matters
You now have a one-page, free checklist that reliably spots frailty in the clients you serve. Use it during annual reviews to catch weight loss, fatigue, or walking slowdown. Early flags mean earlier referrals to physio, dietetics, or the doctor, shaving off some of the 20-year life-gap G et al. reported.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Frailty is a theoretical concept used to track individual age-related declines. Persons with intellectual disabilities (ID) often present with pre-existing deficits that would be considered frailty markers in the general population. The previously developed Vienna Frailty Questionnaire for Persons with ID (VFQ-ID) was aimed at assessing frailty in this specific population. However, findings of the initial frailty study in 2007 revealed some weaknesses. This paper reports on the development of the Vienna Frailty Questionnaire for Persons with ID - Revised (VFQ-ID-R) as well as its first application and psychometric evaluation. The authors re-administered the VFQ-ID-R to participants with ID who had been assessed with the VFQ-ID in 2007. The goal was to study the factor structure and reliability of the revised test. Internal consistency of the VFQ-ID-R was found to be very good for the entire scale and was moderate for the four domains of the scale. Inter-rater reliability and retest reliability were found to be good. The revisions made to the VFQ-ID will be useful in assessing and supporting ageing individuals with ID.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.03.004