• The Spinal Cord Injury-Falls Concern Scale (SCI-FCS) is a self-report scale assessing the level of concern about falling during common activities of daily life in people with spinal cord injuries who are dependent on manual wheelchairs.
  • Lower scores indicated fewer fall concerns.

ICF Domain

Activity ▶ Participation

Administration

  • Items rated 1-4
  • Total score (16-64) is sum of all items.
  • Higher scores indicate greater levels of fall concern.

Number of Items

16 items

Equipment

None

Languages

English

Training Required

Does not require advanced training

Availability

Can be found here.

# of studies reporting psychometric properties: 7

Interpretability

MCID: not established in SCI population
SEM: not established in SCI population
MDC: not established in SCI population

Reliability

  • High Test-retest Reliability: ICC = 0.93-0.973
  • High Internal Consistency: α =0.82-0.92

(Boswell-Ruys et al. 2010, Marquez et al. 2018)

Validity

Moderate Correlation the Wheelchair Use Confidence Scale, Short Form: r = 0.56

Responsiveness

Not established in SCI

Floor/Ceiling Effect

13 participants (16%) scored the lowest possible (16/64), while only 1 scored the maximum (64/64)

(Butler Forslund et al. 2016)

Reviewers

Kyle Diab, Joanne Chi

Date Last Updated

July 2019

Marquez MA, Santis RD, AMmendola V, Antonacci M, Santilli V, Berardi A, Valente D, Galeoto G. Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the “spinal cord injury-falls concern scale” in the Italian population. Spinal Cord. 2018;56(7): 712-718. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29449685/

Boswell-ruys CL, Harvey LA, Delbaere K, Lord SR. A Falls Concern Scale for people with spinal cord injury (SCI-FCS). Spinal Cord. 2010;48(9):704-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20125107

Butler forslund E, Roaldsen KS, Hultling C, Wahman K, Franzén E. Concerns about falling in wheelchair users with spinal cord injury-validation of the Swedish version of the spinal cord injury falls concern scale. Spinal Cord. 2016;54(2):115-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26261075

Roaldsen KS, Måøy ÅB, Jørgensen V, Stanghelle JK. Test-retest reliability at the item level and total score level of the Norwegian version of the Spinal Cord Injury Falls Concern Scale (SCI-FCS). J Spinal Cord Med. 2016;39(3):317-26.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26829977