Community Integration Project

Description:
A study examining the utility of two different measures of community integration following acquired brain injury

Rationale:
Accurate measurement of key concepts that define community integration are integral to acquired brain injury rehabilitation

More recent measures of community integration need to be compared to existing 'gold standard' measures of community integration

Many measures of community integration are delivered through mail administration yet little is known about the properties of the measures when administered via this method

Participants:
People with acquired brain injury and their significant others

Key Features:
Comparison of the well established Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ) that measures current participation across three life domains with a newer measure, namely the Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale (SPRS) that aims to capture change from pre to post injury across three conceptually similar life domains

Examination of the psychometric properties of community integration measures using mail administration

Examination of the comparability of participant (person with ABI) and proxy (family member) ratings on measures of community integration

Funding:
Internally funded by ABIOS

Research / Evaluation Strategies:
Mail administration of a questionnaire package including the CIQ and the SPRS to people with acquired brain injury and a significant other

Statistical analysis of the psychometric properties, completion rates and theoretical structure of the CIQ and the SPRS when administered via mail

Outputs and Outcomes:
The SPRS is a more complex scale because it asks for pre and post injury comparisons and therefore completion rates were lower for this scale.

Both measures are compromised with mail administration and 'in-person' administration is a sounder method

The SPRS demonstrated better psychometric properties than the CIQ because of the greater response choices available

Community integration is a complex theoretical concept and neither measure demonstrated the theoretical structure predicted by the three life domains measured

Publications:
Kuipers, P., Kendall, M., Fleming, J., & Tate, R. (2004). Comparison of the Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale (SPRS) with the Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ): Psychometric properties. Brain Injury, 18(2), 161-177.

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