We recently held an expert spotlight event on the PAR-QoL Website with Dr. Vanessa Noonan, Director of Research at the Rick Hansen Institute. Dr. Noonan will be posting her responses to those questions in a few weeks but we also received a few questions specific to the PAR-QoL site.
Here are the questions and our answers:
Question: Par-QOL is a wonderful tool for SCI social researchers! But depression is a frequent accompaniment to SCI which obviously affects QOL. Why is it not listed as a secondary health condition please, with a whole section of the website devoted to it? Thanks very much for considering adding this to your already highly informative measurement tools here.
Answer: Thank you for your kind remarks! We agree that depression is an important secondary health condition that has implications for quality of life. The core content of the PAR-QoL site was developed through a series of systematic literature reviews on a host of secondary health conditions. However, because of the large scope of the work, we started our reviews on the listed conditions on the site. We will be adding a section on depression (targeted for 2013) as well as other life domains (i.e., physical activity). We have an upcoming publication in Disability and Rehabilitation which discusses the development of the website, which goes into depth our rationale and steps for building the website.
Question: Can you post how to get a copy of the Community Activities Checklist (CAC)or speak to its authors about its psychometric properties? Thanks very much!
Answer: Due to copyright and technical limitations with the website, we do not post any outcome tools but do strive to help people on where to find them. A full copy of the CAC is available in the following article:
Kemp BJ, Ettelson D. Quality of life while living and aging with a spinal cord injury and other impairments. Top Spinal Cord Inj Rehabil. 2001;6:116–27.
Please keep sending in your questions and comments about the site. We want to hear from people on what we can do to better serve your needs!
The PAR-QoL Team
