Activity-Specific Balance Confidence Scale
What It Measures
The Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale asks how confident a person feels that they will not lose their balance or become unsteady while doing 16 everyday activities, from walking around the house to reaching for something on a shelf to walking on an icy sidewalk. Each activity is rated from 0 (no confidence) to 100 (complete confidence), and the ratings are averaged into one score.
Balance confidence is not the same as balance ability. Someone can be physically steady and still avoid leaving the house out of fear of falling, and the ABC captures that where a performance test does not. It can be filled out alone, though the developers recommend a face-to-face interview. Occupational therapy practitioners pair it with a performance measure when addressing fall prevention and community mobility.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: May be reproduced for educational use, research, and clinical practices (using the scale fewer than 1,000 times per year). Permission is required for all other uses of this assessment. Permission requests go to Anita Myers at the University of Waterloo ([email protected]).
