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Letter to Editor

Correlates of physical disability in the elderly

population of rural North India (Haryana)
Sir, Md A. Bashar
Department of Community Medicine, School of Public Health,
I read with great interest the article by Khan et  al. PGIMER, Chandigarh, India
titled, “Correlates of physical disability in the elderly Address for correspondence:
population of a rural population of North India.”[1] Dr. Md A. Bashar,
R. No. 125, School of Public Health, PGIMER,
However, certain issues undermine the validity of the Chandigarh - 160 012, India.
study findings: E-mail: imback20006@yahoo.in

First, the authors arrived at the requisite sample size by References

taking the relative precision as 20%, which is too high
and hence erroneous. Most authors recommend a relative
precision of 5% if prevalence of the disease/condition is
expected to be between 10% and 90%.[2]
Second, the authors used the Barthel index together
with Katz index to assess physical disability in the
study population and defined physical disability as
needing help in one or more of the activities of daily
living activities included in the index. However, the
Barthel index is an ordinal scale with scores ranging
from 0–2 to 0–3 for each of the 10 items totaling 0–20.[3]
The authors should have mentioned the cutoff score for
classifying an elderly person as physically disabled as
per the scoring system rather than rely on subjective
assessment.
1. Khan ZA, Singh C, Khan T. Correlates of physical disability in
the elderly population of rural North India (Haryana). J Family
Community Med 2018;25:199‑204.
2. Pourhoseingholi MA, Vahedi M, Rahimzadeh M. Sample size
calculation in medical studies. Gastroenterol Hepatol Bed Bench
2013;6:14‑7.
3. Barthel Index of Activities of Daily Living. Available from:
http://www.camapcanada.ca/Barthel.pdf. [Last accessed on
2018 Nov 21].
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These issues should be considered when the validity of

DOI:
the study findings is examined.
10.4103/jfcm.JFCM_210_18

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil. How to cite this article: Bashar MA. Correlates of physical disability
in the elderly population of rural North India (Haryana). J Fam
Conflicts of interest Community Med 2019;26:144.
© 2019 Journal of Family and Community Medicine | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow
There are no conflicts of interest.

144 © 2019 Journal of Family and Community Medicine | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow