Trajectories of Life Satisfaction After Spinal Cord Injury

Objective: To describe individual-level temporal change in life satisfaction after spinal cord injury.

Design: Individual growth curve (IGC) analysis of prospectively collected data from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research National Spinal Cord Injury Database (NSCID).

Setting: Multicenter, longitudinal database study.

Participants: Participants (N=4846) in the NSCID.

Interventions: Not applicable.

Main outcome measure: Rasch-transformed Satisfaction With Life Scale scores.

Results: Individual-level trajectories reflecting life satisfaction vary extensively and are associated with demographic and injury-related characteristics. Demographic characteristics include race, sex, pre-employment and discharge marital status, and level of education; injury-related factors include days in rehabilitation, neurologic level, age at injury, and injury etiology. Results are displayed graphically by way of a computer-generated interactive tool and represent different trajectories of individual-level changes in life satisfaction.

Conclusions: IGC methodology allows researchers and clinicians to anticipate patient-specific trajectories through use of an automated interactive tool. Projected trajectories hold promise in facilitating planning for inpatient and outpatient services, which could enhance long-term outcomes.