The Spinal Cord Injury Spasticity Evaluation Tool: Development and Evaluation

OBJECTIVE: To develop and assess the reliability and validity of a new scale designed to measure the impact of spasticity on daily life in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). DESIGN: Scale development and assessment. SETTING: General community. PARTICIPANTS: Community-dwelling persons with chronic SCI and spasticity participated in study 1 (n=9), study 2 (n=19), and study 3 (n=61). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Study 1: participant definitions of spasticity and list of scale items. Study 2: scale refinement, face validity, and time to complete. Study 3: internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and construct validity. RESULTS: The Spinal Cord Injury Spasticity Evaluation Tool (SCI-SET) is a 7-day recall self-report questionnaire that takes into account both the problematic and useful effects of spasticity on daily life in people with SCI. The scale exhibited good face validity and required 6.8+/-2.6 minutes to complete. The internal consistency (alpha) and intraclass correlation coefficient of the SCI-SET were .90 and .91, respectively. Construct validity was supported by correlations (r range, -.48 to .68; P<.01) between SCI-SET scores and theoretically meaningful constructs. CONCLUSIONS: The SCI-SET fills a need for a reliable and valid self-report measure of the impact of spasticity on daily life in people with SCI, taking into account both the problematic and useful effects of spasticity.