Reliability and Construct Validity of the TBI-QOL Communication Short Form as a Parent-Proxy Report Instrument for...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Rehabilitation Medicine

Background:

• Traumatic brain injury (TBI) significantly impacts functional communication in children.
• Existing measures like the TBI-QOL COM were developed for adult self-report.
• Parent-proxy reports are crucial for assessing functional communication in pediatric TBI populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the internal consistency and construct validity of the TBI-QOL COM short form as a parent-proxy measure.
• To determine if the TBI-QOL COM can be reliably used by parents to report on their child's communication abilities post-TBI.
• To assess the psychometric properties of the TBI-QOL COM for pediatric TBI survivors.

Main Methods:

• 129 parent-proxy raters completed the TBI-QOL COM short form 6 months post-pediatric TBI.
• Participants' children with TBI ranged from 8 to 18 years old.
• Analysis included internal consistency (ordinal alpha) and construct validity (known-groups, convergent, discriminant).

Main Results:

• The parent-proxy TBI-QOL COM demonstrated strong internal consistency (ordinal α = .93).
• Evidence of known-groups validity was found, with more severe injuries correlating with more abnormal scores.
• Convergent and discriminant validity were supported by expected correlations with related constructs.

Conclusions:

• The TBI-QOL COM short form shows promise as a parent-proxy report measure for pediatric TBI.
• Further development is recommended, including content expansion and specific calibrations for parent-proxy raters.
• This validates the use of the TBI-QOL COM for assessing functional communication in children with TBI.