Dimensionality and Item-Difficulty Hierarchy of the Lower Extremity Fugl-Meyer Assessment in Individuals With Subacute and Chronic Stroke

Our findings suggest that the FMA-LE might represent a multidimensional construct, challenging the use of a total score of the FMA-LE to predict lower extremity motor recovery. Removal of the misfit items resulted in creation of a unidimensional scale composed of the abnormal synergy items. However, this unidimensional scale deviates from the originally proposed hierarchical ordering.