Comparing Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms Reported via Questionnaires Versus a Novel Structured Interview

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Clinical Psychology
• Rehabilitation Medicine

Background:

• Self-report questionnaires are common for assessing mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) symptoms in research.
• Questionnaires may be susceptible to biases compared to direct clinical interviews.
• Acquiescence response bias, the tendency to agree with statements, can affect symptom reporting.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare mTBI symptom reporting using widely used self-report inventories and a novel Structured Interview of TBI Symptoms (SITS).
• To explore the association between acquiescence response bias and symptom reporting across different assessment modes.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 73 patients with mTBI at a Level 1 trauma center within 2 weeks of injury.
• Assessed participants at 3 months post-TBI using the SITS, Rivermead Post Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ), Sport Concussion Assessment Tool-3 (SCAT-3) symptom checklist, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form True Response Inconsistency (TRIN-r) scale.
• Ensured participants produced nonacquiescent profiles.

Main Results:

• mTBI symptom burden and individual symptom endorsement were highly concordant between SITS closed-ended questions, RPQ, and SCAT-3.
• Participants reported fewer symptoms to open-ended questions compared to closed-ended questions within the SITS.
• The difference in reporting between open- and closed-ended questions was weakly correlated with TRIN-r; symptom scales showed weak associations with TRIN-r.

Conclusions:

• mTBI symptom reporting varies by question format (open- vs. closed-ended) rather than assessment mode (interview vs. questionnaire).
• Acquiescence response bias plays a measurable but small role in overall mTBI symptom reporting.
• Findings support the validity of current TBI symptom inventories and have implications for mTBI research methodologies.