The Family Outcome Study
Participating Centres

Development of a valid and reliable scale to measure
family outcomes after traumatic brain injury.

Background

Families play a key role in assisting the long-term recovery of a person who sustains a traumatic brain injury. However, family members often experience distress, not only as a result of seeing their close relative injured, but also as a consequence of the inevitable disruption and reorganising of family life and family roles that occurs.

A recent review of existing family scales in the brain injury literature have highlighted the fact that the numerous scales developed to date have generally had poor psychometric properties. As a result, it is difficult to evaluate the efficacy of current support programs provided to families.

Having more accurate information about the size and nature of the problems being faced by families will enable rehabilitation services to provide more effective, appropriate support and treatment.

Project aims

The current project aims to develop a reliable, valid and sensitive family outcome measure.

Implementation

Fourteen centres across 4 countries (see below) are participating in the project. The centres initially brainstormed items for the measure, and an 82-item pilot measure was devised. This measure is currently being administered to approximately 400 families across the 14 centres.

Families at the Liverpool Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit are also completing additional measures to test the reliability and validity of the new outcome measure.

The plan is to then analyse the data and produce the final measure by the end of June 2007.

Click on the locations below to read more about the participating centres or scroll down to view the map!