• Developed to provide a sensitive global functional scale for measuring gains in individuals with tetraplegia during rehabilitation.
  • Items include: wash/dry hair, turn supine to side in bed, lower extremity dressing, open carton/jar, transfer from bed to wheelchair and lock wheelchair. These items were selected from five of the functional performance categories of self-care and mobility on the QIF in order to reduce item redundancies of the original 37-item version.

Clinical Considerations

  • The QIF – Short Form is more practical to use than the original QIF as the number of items have been reduced.
  • The QIF – Short Form is designed specifically for the quadriplegic SCI population.

ICF Domain

Activities and Participation ▶ Self-Care

Administration

  • Clinician-administered; interview format.
  • Scored on a 5 point scale from 0 (dependent) to 4 (independent).
  • Administration time is under 5 minutes.

Number of Items

6

Equipment

None

Scoring

Scores from the 6 items are summed and scores range from 0 to 24.

Languages

English

Training Required

Does not require advanced training.

Availability

Can be found here.

The file above contains item details and scoring instructions, as well as a ready-to-use worksheet for data collection.

# of studies reporting psychometric properties: 2

Interpretability

  • Higher scores indicate greater independence in key ADLs.
  • No cut-points or normative data for the SCI population have been established
  • Published data for the SCI population is available for comparison (see the Interpretability section of the Research Summary sheet).

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

Reliability

Internal consistency is high for the total QIF-SF (Cronbach’s a = 0.89)

(Marino & Goin 1999)

Validity

  • High correlation with Quadriplegia Index of Function (QIF):
    r = 0.987 (p = 0.987)
  • High correlation with ASIA Upper Extremity Motor Score (UEMS):
    r = 0.824

(Marino & Goin 1999: N = 95 (85 male), tetraplegia; mean age (SD): 32.1 (13.2); non-ambulatory at 6 months)

  • Moderate correlation with health state related to upper-extremity impairment of subjects:
    r = 0.313 (p = 0.03)

(Snoek et al. 2005: N = 47 tetraplegics (38M, 9F); mean age (SD): 42 (13); mean duration of injury (SD): 11 (9); 44% AIS A, 31% AIS B, 9% AIS C, 16% AIS D)

Responsiveness

There is a significant difference in QIF-SF scores across the 3 measurement times (start of rehab, 3 months after start of rehab, and discharge) for groups C3-C6 and C7-T1.

(Marino & Goin 1999, Spooren et al. 2006)

Floor/Ceiling Effect

No values were reported for the presence of floor/ceiling effects in the QIF-SF for the SCI population.

Reviewers

Dr. Ben Mortenson, Jeff Tan, Gita Manhas

Date Last Updated

22 July 2020

Marino RJ, Goin JE. Development of a short-form Quadriplegia Index of Function scale. Spinal Cord 1999;37:289-296.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10338351

Spooren AI, Janssen-Potten YJ, Post MW, Kerckhofs E, Nene A, Seelen HA. Measuring change in arm hand skilled performance in persons with a cervical spinal cord injury: responsiveness of the Van Lieshout Test. Spinal Cord 2006; 44: 772-779.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16819555

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