Feasibility of a Home Hazard Management Program for Malaysian Stroke Survivors

HOMEFAST is a 25-item form that evaluates the performance of individuals to perform activities safely in the home environment. It assesses seven aspects of use i.e. floors, furniture arrangements, lighting, bathrooms, kitchen storage, staircases and movements (Mackenzie, Byles & Higginbotham, 2000). It has scientific evidence in terms of validity and reliability. It has been tested for senior citizens living in the community and can be used by senior citizens, or health professionals (e.g., job-rearing practitioners, social workers, nurses, health science practitioners and medical practitioners) and the public (Romli et al, 2018; Romli et al., 2017). The scores are "0" for Yes and "1" for No. All the scores will be added up to form 1 total score. The total score is 25. A higher score indicates a higher risk of falling. The assessment will be administered twice during the study trial.

The FES-I short form is a 7-item questionnaire of fall-related self-efficacy based on the Falls Efficacy Scale-International (16 items) (Kempen et al., 2008). It has a 4-Likert scale from 1 'not at all concerned' to 4 'very concerned'. Higher values indicate less fall-related self-efficacy (and more concern about falling). The internal and 4-week test- retest reliability of the Short FES-I is excellent (Cronbach's alpha 0.92, intra-class coefficient 0.83) and comparable to the FES-I. The correlation between the Short FES-I and the FES-I is 0.97 (Kempen et al., 2008). The FES-I short form has been translated in Malay and Mandarin and has good reliability and validity (Tan et al., 2018). The assessment will be administered twice during the study trial.

The falls diary is the preferred method of falls monitoring (Lord, Sherrington, Menz, & Close, 2007) as it enables falls to be recorded immediately after they have occurred, minimizing the chance of participants forgetting to report a fall. The falls diary includes a calendar for each month of the study (3 months). Participants will have to tick at each box of every day whether they have fallen or not. If they fall on a specific day, the is another page which the participants must detail out the date, activity, time during the fall and if they when to see the doctor after the fall.

Stroke Impact Scale is a 59-item measure that covers 8 domains namely strength, hand function, ADL/IADL, mobility, communication, emotion, memory and thinking and participation (Duncan et al., 1999). Each item is rated in a 5- Likert scale in terms of the difficulty the patient has experienced in completing each item. Scores range from 0 to 100, a higher score indicates better recovery. The SIS has adequate to excellent test-rest reliability (Duncan et al., 1999) and excellent criterion validity (Duncan et al., 2002). The assessment will be administered twice during the study trial.

The SF-12 is a multipurpose measure of QOL derived from the SF-36 (Ware, Kosinski & Keller, 1996). Two summary measures are produced, the physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) (Turner-Bowker et al., 2003). The 12 items in the SF-12 includes 1 or 2 items from each of the 8 health concepts: physical functioning, role limitations because of physical health problems, bodily pain, general health, vitality (energy/fatigue), social functioning, role limitations because of emotional problems, and mental health (psychological distress and psychological well-being)(Ellis et al., 2013). Finally, because the 8 domains have different ranges, they are transformed to have a common range of 0 (worst health) to 100 (best health).

The Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) 22-item questionnaire developed by Zarit et al. (1985) has been used extensively in measuring caregiving strain. In addition, shorter versions of the ZBI ranging from 1 to 18 items, have been developed. However, Yu et al. (2019) found that the 6-item version was the most optimal short version as it provided similar diagnostic utility to the original 22-item version with the fewest items. The self-report instrument measures two dimension of caregiving namely personal and role strain using a 5-point scale ranging from 0 'never' to 4 'nearly always' (Herbert, Bravo and Preville, 2000). The scores of each item are added up to form one total score. The maximum score is 88 and higher scores indicate greater burden.

The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) based on the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance is designed for use by occupational therapists to detect change in patients' self-perception of their occupational performance over time (Law et al., 1998). With a semi-structured interview, the patient is encouraged to identify problems in self-care, productivity, or leisure activities. It concerns those activities the patient wants, needs, or is expected to do, but cannot do, or those in which the patient is not satisfied with current performance. The patient rates importance of the problems on a 10-point scale from 'not important at all' (score 1) to 'extremely important' (score 10). The patient is also asked to rate satisfaction with performance on a 10-point scale from 'not satisfied at all' to 'extremely satisfied'. These scores range from 0 to 10, higher scores reflect better performance and satisfaction with performance as perceived by the patient.

The Modified Rankin Scale is used to measure the degree of disability in patients who have had a stroke (Rankin, 1957). The Modified Rankin Scale is an ordered scale coded from 0 (no symptoms at all) through 5 (severe disability) and 6 (death). The conventional method of administration for the MRS is a guided interview process. The assessment is carried out by asking the patient about their activities of daily living, including outdoor activities.

This questionnaire will consist of a set of questions prepared by researcher to identify the feedbacks of participants regarding the feasibility of the intervention.

Participants will fill up a demographic data sheet containing personal and medical information.

The Six Item Cognitive Impairment Test (6CIT) is a brief cognitive function test which takes less than five minutes and is widely used in primary care settings. Scores range from 0 to 28, and higher scores indicate significant cognitive impairments.