Follow-up in persons with traumatic spinal cord injury: Questionnaire reliability

Aim. The aim of this study is to show the compliance and the test-retest reliability of the questionnaire. Methods. Construction of a structured questionnaire to perform a phone follow-up in 511 persons with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) 4 years after discharge from the first rehabilitative hospitalization. The questionnaire is structured in 24 items, comprising exclusion (closed questions) answers and 3 analogic scale answers, divided into 7 aspects: clinical conditions, sentimental relationships, quality of life, autonomy, mobility, occupation, social reintegration. A pilot survey on 20 subjects with SCI, hospitalized in different periods in 2 rehabilitation centers, was performed to check the questionnaire's feasibility and reproducibility. The persons were interviewed twice by telephone, with an interval of about one month, by a psychologist. The questionnaire was completed during one single phone conversation. Results. No missing answers were recorded. The test run for this questionnaire showed high reproducibility based on the large numbers of questions with 100% correspondence between the answers "before" and "after". For most of the other questions this factor ranged between 80% and 99%, and for 2 questions on the analogic scale between 30% and 50%. Conclusions. The data collected by this pilot survey show the reliability of this questionnaire for all answers, save for the quantification of subjective variables.