Poster 10: Activity-related quality of life: activities and personal feelings about them in the first year after traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Objective: To investigate relationships between community activities and feelings about specific activities, desires to change them, and global life satisfaction. Design: Observational study with follow-up 1 month after rehabilitation discharge and 12 months postinjury. Setting: Community. Participants: 144 adult survivors of serious traumatic brain injury. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Community Integration Questionnaire-2, augmented by individuals’ ratings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, desire to change each activity, and the Diener Life Satisfaction Scale. Results: Although significant correlations were found for some items, most correlations between objective activities and subjective ratings of quality of life (QOL) were low and nonsignificant. Subjects generally reported that they were satisfied with their activities, but there were exceptions (eg, work situation). Correlations between activity-specific satisfaction and general life satisfaction were also weak and generally nonsignificant. Activity-specific satisfaction correlated robustly with subjects’ desires to change them, but general life satisfaction did not. Conclusions: The lack of association between objective activities and subjective appraisals of them is a challenge to outcomes measurement and has implications for the targeting of rehabilitative interventions and evaluation of their worth. More research is needed to understand how individualizing functional objectives and gains might maximize likely effects on the QOL of persons served.