Development of the Participation Assessment With Recombined Tools–Objective for Use After Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Whiteneck GG, Dijkers MP, Heinemann AW, Bogner JA, Bushnik T, Cicerone KD, Corrigan JD, Hart T, Malec JF, Millis SR. Development of the Participation Assessment With Recombined Tools–Objective for use after traumatic brain injury. Objective To develop a new measure, the Participation Assessment With Recombined Tools–Objective (PART-O), based on items from 3 participation instruments. Design Instrument development based on survey research. Setting Community. Participants Adults (N=400) with traumatic brain injury (TBI) 1 to 15 years postinjury, recruited from 8 TBI Model Systems (TBIMS). Interventions None. Main Outcome Measure Community Integration Questionnaire version 2; Participation Objective, Participation Subjective; Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique; PART-O. Results Using Rasch rating scale analysis to evaluate the psychometric properties of participation items drawn from 3 instruments, a set of 24 items was developed that covered a broad range of participation content and formed a measure with person separation of 2.47, person reliability of .86, item spread of 4.25 logits, item separation of 11.36, and item reliability of .99. Items were well targeted on the sample with only 1 item misfitting. The PART-O showed expected relationships with measures of impairment, activity limitations, and subjective well-being. Conclusions The 24-item PART-O is an acceptable measure of objective participation for persons with moderate and severe TBI. It has been adopted as the measure of participation in the TBIMS.