Citation

Wen PS, Waid-Ebbs JK, Graham DP, Helmer DA. Arch. Phys. Med. Rehabil. 2018; 99(2S): S86-S93.

Affiliation

War Related Illness and Injury Study Center VA- New Jersey Health Care System East Orange, NJ, 6 Rutgers University-New Jersey Medical School Newark, NJ.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.apmr.2017.04.026

PMID

28583464

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To compare the psychometric properties of two commonly used participation measures: the Community Reintegration of Service Members (CRIS) and the Participation Assessment with Recombined Tools-Objective (PART-O) in Veterans with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

DESIGN: The data were collected from two cross-sectional observation studies conducted in two Veterans Affairs medical centers. SETTING: Questionnaires were completed in-person or by mail. PARTICIPANTS: Veterans with mild TBI were recruited from the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston (N=94) and the Malcom Randall North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System (N=107). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: CRIS and PART-O.

RESULTS: We conducted Rasch analysis on the PART-O and on three subscales of the CRIS (Extent of Participation, Perceived Limitation, and Satisfaction). For PART-O, results showed PART-O has questionable unidimensionality. For both instruments, some rating categories were under used and rating scales did not advance accordingly. Compared with PART-O, the CRIS was able to distinguish more categories of a person's ability (>5 vs 2 by PART-O ) and had better internal consistency as indicated by higher Cronbach's Alpha (0.96-0.98vs 0.65 for PART-O).

CONCLUSIONS: To capture participation unique to Veterans with mTBI, CRIS has greater potential to detect a change in participation and is therefore recommended over PART-O. Rating scales of both instruments, however, need further refinement. We suggest future studies examine collapsed rating categories and use qualitative methods to redefine categories.

Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

Brain injury; Community integration; Veteran