Development of Performance-based Outcome Assessment for Acute Spinal Cord Injury

Research Objectives: To describe the development and refinement of candidate items, item intents and administration guidelines for a newly developed item pool that evaluates movement-in-the-context-of-function acutely after spinal cord injury (SCI).

Design: Descriptive qualitative methods: narrative review, expert panel, and field-testing. A narrative review was used for construct development. Expert panel and field-testing sessions were used for item development and refinement.

Setting: Research lab

Participants: An expert panel (X=5) of an EMT, neurosurgeon, physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor, and 2 intensive care unit nurses was consulted to refine item intents and administration guidelines. Beta-testing sessions with persons with SCI (X=4) informed item refinement and elimination.

Interventions: Not applicable

Main Outcome Measures: Not applicable. This study is part of the development of a performance-based outcome assessment called the Spinal Cord Injury-Movement Index (SCI-MI).

Results: 33 candidate items, amendable to administration acutely after SCI, were developed for against gravity (X=13), gravity minimized (X=2), and gravity eliminated (X=18) positions. Additional field-testing sessions and expert panels will be used to refine standardized administration guidelines and develop scoring guidelines.

Conclusions: The study findings informed the development of SCI-MI candidate items for administration in acute care settings.

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors have no conflicts of interests.

This study is funded by the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation (PI: Mulcahey).