Could questions on activities of daily living estimate grip strength of older adults living independently in the community?

The aim of this study was to identify questions that could estimate grip strength. Twenty-six questions about the degree of perceived difficulty performing manual tasks as well as two questions concerning self-rated grip strength were developed and completed by 123 community-dwelling older adults, followed by grip strength measurements using a Martin vigorimeter. Multiple regression analyses with all of the participants revealed that the question about the difficulty of opening a jar (question 4) was most associated with grip strength. When analyses were done by gender, the same question showed the best correlation for women, whereas the one for men was self-rated grip strength compared with people the same age (question 28). For the women, age and question 4 together explained 54% of the variance in their grip strength and for the men, age and question 28 explained 46%. Further studies are needed to identify other information that could help to better estimate grip strength for use in epidemiological surveys.