Measuring psychological trauma after spinal cord injury: Development and psychometric characteristics of the SCI-QOL Psychological Trauma item bank and short form

This research focuses on developing a tool to measure psychological trauma in individuals with spinal cord injuries (SCI). Given the traumatic nature of SCI, individuals are at high risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study describes the creation and testing of the SCI-QOL Psychological Trauma item bank and short form, which aims to detect and track psychological trauma in patients with SCI. The goal is to provide a reliable and sensitive instrument that can be used to assess and monitor PTSD symptoms in this population, addressing a gap in existing measurement tools.

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  The 31 items fit a unidimensional model (CFI=0.952; RMSEA=0.061) and demonstrated good precision (theta range between 0.6 and 2.5).
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  Nine items demonstrated negligible DIF with little impact on score estimates.
• 3
  The final calibrated item bank contains 19 items and is available as a short form and a computer adaptive test (CAT) version.