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

STUDY DESIGN: Secondary psychometric analysis of cross-sectional previously collected data.

OBJECTIVES: Explore 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.

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

METHODS: Adults (>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.

RESULTS: For 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.

CONCLUSIONS: Only 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.