Participation Research

KEY FINDING: Seventy-two percent of participants significantly reduced their time spent on bowel emptying after colostomy.

KEY FINDING: The review identified ten objective and fourteen subjective QoL measures used in SCI research related to neurogenic bladder.

KEY FINDING: Mobility independence decreases with age in wheelchair users with SCI across three domains: changing basic body position, transferring oneself, and moving around.

KEY FINDING: Living in a care home environment severely damages the quality of life for people with SCI.

KEY FINDING: 26.4% of participants had current pressure ulcers at the time of the study.

KEY FINDING: The SCI-QOL project has developed item banks to measure various aspects of quality of life for individuals with SCI, including secondary medical complications, emotional health, social functioning, and physical functioning.

KEY FINDING: The SCI-QOL consists of 19 item banks, including the SCI-Functional Index banks, and 3 fixed-length scales measuring physical, emotional, and social aspects of health-related QOL (HRQOL).

KEY FINDING: We developed 14 unidimensional calibrated item banks and 3 calibrated scales across physical, emotional, and social health domains.

KEY FINDING: The final item banks demonstrated unidimensionality (Bladder Management Difficulties CFI = 0.965; RMSEA = 0.093; Bowel Management Difficulties CFI = 0.955; RMSEA = 0.078) and acceptable fit to a graded response IRT model.

KEY FINDING: The study developed a 12-item SCI-QOL Pressure Ulcers scale to assess the impact of pressure ulcers on the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI).