Preliminary psychometric analyses of the International Spinal Cord Injury Quality of Life Basic Data Set.

STUDY

designSecondary psychometric analysis of cross-sectional previously collected data.

objectivesExplore the floor and ceiling effects, convergent, and divergent validity of the International Spinal Cord Injury Basic Quality of Life Data Set (SCI QoL-BDS) in a sample of people with spinal cord damage (SCD) from different countries, with different causes (both traumatic and non-traumatic), and different settings.

settingCommunity dwellers with SCD in Australia, Brazil, India, The Netherlands, and USA, and inpatient rehabilitation: India.

methodsAdults (>18 years) with chronic SCD with either traumatic or non-traumatic aetiologies living in the community (n = 624), in inpatient rehabilitation following the onset of SCI (India; n = 115) and able-bodied controls (Australia; n = 220) had the following data collected by survey or face-face interview: SCI QoL-BDS, demographic and clinical characteristics (e.g., age, gender, years post SCI/SCD, education, employment) and reference measures of quality of life, disability and depression.

resultsFor the whole sample, there were no notable floor or ceiling effects, internal consistency was good (Cronbach's alpha = 0.84) and the corrected item-total correlations generally were acceptable (all > 0.3 except for in Brazilian cohort). Convergent and divergent validity were largely confirmed though there were some aspects of validity that were suboptimal.

conclusionsOnly minor psychometric issues were identified. This preliminary analysis suggests that there are no reason for concern about the use of the SCI QoL-BDS for clinical or research purposes, notwithstanding the need for further studies.