Development and psychometric characteristics of the SCI-QOL Ability to Participate and Satisfaction with Social Roles and Activities item banks and short forms

Objective: To develop a spinal cord injury (SCI)-focused version of PROMIS and Neuro-QOL social domain item banks; evaluate the psychometric properties of items developed for adults with SCI; and report information to facilitate clinical and research use.

Design: We used a mixed-methods design to develop and evaluate Ability to Participate in Social Roles and Activities and Satisfaction with Social Roles and Activities items. Focus groups helped define the constructs; cognitive interviews helped revise items; and confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory methods helped calibrate item banks and evaluate differential item functioning related to demographic and injury characteristics.

Setting: Five SCI Model System sites and one Veterans Administration medical center.

Participants: The calibration sample consisted of 641 individuals; a reliability sample consisted of 245 individuals residing in the community.

Results: A subset of 27 Ability to Participate and 35 Satisfaction items demonstrated good measurement properties and negligible differential item functioning related to demographic and injury characteristics. The SCI-specific measures correlate strongly with the PROMIS and Neuro-QOL versions. Ten item short forms correlate >0.96 with the full banks. Variable-length CATs with a minimum of 4 items, variable-length CATs with a minimum of 8 items, fixed-length CATs of 10 items, and the 10-item short forms demonstrate construct coverage and measurement error that is comparable to the full item bank.

Conclusion: The Ability to Participate and Satisfaction with Social Roles and Activities CATs and short forms demonstrate excellent psychometric properties and are suitable for clinical and research applications.