Qualitative assessment of an outcome measure

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Qualitative assessment of an outcome measure in a community ABI service.

  • IRAS ID

    159213

  • Contact name

    Caroline Anderson

  • Contact email

    av001680@student.staffs.ac.uk

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 5 months, 31 days

  • Research summary

    An acquired brain injury (ABI) involves damage to the brain resulting from an acute trauma, illness or infection. ABI is the most common cause of death and disability in young people with hospital admissions of 250-300 per 100 000 in England & Wales, and 4 per 100 000 likely to have an impairment that effects their life six months post injury. Ensuing disabilities are heterogeneous and complex, encompassing both physical and psychological changes; motor & sensory deficits, and cognitive impairment, altered emotional response and loss of behavioural control.
    The importance of measuring need, and monitoring progress, using outcome measures has been nationally identified (DoH, 2005). Global measures of disability, estimating overall level of handicap and social disadvantage, can be used to help evaluate a client's situation. The European Brain Injury Questionnaire (EBIQ) was designed to assess cognitive and social dimensions, together with basic activities of daily living (ADL) in 9 domains: somatic, cognitive, motivation, impulsivity, depression, isolation, physical, communication, and core symptoms.
    By its nature a questionnaire requires a client to categorise their experiences by pre-defined question and response sets. This may limit reporting of issues of concern and limit measurement of improvement in unidentified areas of importance over time. This questionnaire based model may benefit from a richer qualitative evaluation. There exists qualitative data on development of outcome tools and the experiences of having an ABI, but no literature can be found on how well these quantitative tools reflect clients’ subjective experiences.
    We aim to explore how well a client’s current experience, in their own words or in the view of a significant other, relates to what they endorse on outcome measure completion. Using qualitative interview data we aim to assess whether these quantitative data, taken in isolation, give an accurate representation of the client’s current reported difficulties.

  • REC name

    East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1

  • REC reference

    14/ES/1077

  • Date of REC Opinion

    20 Nov 2014

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion