Research priorities: seating and positioning

The Mobility Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology held its State of the Science Conference to address challenges in studying the health, activity and participation of wheelchair users. This article summarizes the discussions of four seating and positioning research topics. Attendees were divided into Breakout Groups and assigned specific research topics that were deemed priorities by the attendees. Breakout Groups were charged with configuring the research topic into a research project and were asked to identify research questions, specific aims or hypotheses, significance, study design possibilities, recruitment considerations, measurement variables and tools, analysis considerations, and anticipated challenges. The four research topics selected for discussion were: Impact of a seating and mobility intervention, Defining a systematic clinical approach to cushion selection, Functional impact of wheelchair cushions, and Long term impact of sitting. Group synopses presented in this paper were compiled from Group notes and presentation. They are presented in sequence and reflect variability in discussion, presentation and content. Some research topics were more amenable to the suggested guidelines than others.