• Generic health status measure.
  • Measures physical, mental and social aspects of health-related functioning in 6 subscales:
    1) Somatic autonomy (score: 0-17)
    2) Mobility control (score: 0-12)
    3) Mobility range (score: 0-11)
    4) Social behavior (score: 0-12)
    5) Emotional stability (score: 0-6)
    6) Psychological autonomy/communication (score: 1-10)
  • Contains statements regarding behavior “sickness impact” and the individual is asked to respond by checking items that describe their health status.

Clinical Considerations

  • The SIP 68 is a commonly used health status measure and it is possible to compare results with various patient populations, including those with SCI.  However, the evidence on the psychometric properties of the SIP 68 for a SCI population is limited and more research is needed to assess reliability and responsiveness.
  • The response options (applies or does not apply to my situation) may cause deceptive figures in the SCI population because all items related to difficulties with walking will be scored negatively, causing a lower score indicating greater health-related status.

ICF Domain

Quality of Life

Administration

  • Can be administered by the interviewer or the client (self-report).
  • All items are scored dichotomously (no = 0, yes = 1).
  • Administration time is usually 15-20 minutes.

Number of Items

68

Equipment

None

Scoring

  • The items reported as “yes” are used to calculate the scores.
  • The questions regarding walking are not relevant to wheelchair-dependent individuals and a scoring modification is proposed in such cases – for a “yes” response to the item “I cannot walk at all”, all 7 items related to walking are scored positively.

Languages

The full SIP (136 items) has been translated into several languages so far, including Spanish.

Training Required

None

Availability

Can be purchased here.

Note: for individual clinical practice and non-funded academic research, use of the SIP is free.

# of studies reporting psychometric properties: 3

Interpretability

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

  • Higher scores indicate more health-related behavioral problems (i.e. worse health state).
  • The SIP-68 can be reported as an overall total score, three dimension scores (physical, psychological and social) or six sub-scale scores.
  • No normative data have been established for the SCI population
  • There is published data available for the SCI population for comparison (see the Interpretability section of the Study Details sheet).

Reliability

  • High Internal Consistency: α = 0.92

(Post et al. 1996; N=315, 75% male, mixed injury types, mean (SD) time since injury = 3.6 (1.9) years)

  • High test-retest correlation: ICC = 0.88

(Nanda et al. 2003; N=40 (all with SCI), 100% male, mean age (SD): 51.9 (13.0) years)

Validity

  • High correlation with Barthel Index (BI):
    r = -0.74
  • Moderate correlation with Life Satisfaction Questionnaire (LSQ or LISAT-9):
    r = -0.52

(Post et al. 1996; N=315, 75% male, mixed injury types, mean (SD) time since injury = 3.6 (1.9) years)

  • Moderate correlation with ADL:
    r = 0.44
  • Moderate correlation with IADL:
    r = 0.57
  • High correlation with SIP:
    r = 0.94

(Nanda et al. 2003; N=398 (119 with SCI), 49% male, mean age (SD): 53.8 (18.2) years)

  • High correlation with VO2 peak:
    r = -0.74
  • High correlation with POmax:
    r = -0.68

(Dallmeijer et al. 2001; N=37, 10 high tetraplegia, 9 low tetraplegia, 7 motor incomplete tetraplegia, 11 paraplegia)

Responsiveness

No values were reported for the responsiveness of the SIP-68 for the SCI population.

Floor/Ceiling Effect

No values were reported for the presence of floor/ceiling effects in the SIP68 for the SCI population.

Reviewer

Dr. Ben Mortenson, John Zhu, Matthew Querée, Gita Manhas

Date Last Updated

22 July 2020

Bergner M, Bobbit R, Carter W, Gilson B. The Sickness Impact Profile: Development and Final Revision of a Health Status Measure. Med Care 1981;8:787-805.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7278416

De Bruin A, Diederiks J, De Witte L, Stevens F, Philipsen H. The Development of a Short Generic Version of the Sickness Impact Profile. J Clin Epidemiol 1994;47:407-418.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7730866

Post M, De Bruin A, De Witte L, Schrijvers A. The SIP68: A Measure of Health-Related Functional Status in rehabilitation Medicine. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 1996;77:440-445.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8629919

Post M, De Witte L, Van Asbeck F, Schrijvers A. Predictors of Health Status and Life Satisfaction of People with Spinal Cord Injuries. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 1998;79:395-402.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9552104

Post MW, Gerritsen J, Diederikst JP, DeWittet LP. Measuring health status of people who are wheelchair dependent: validity of the Sickness Impact Profile 68 and the Nottingham Health Profile. Disabil Rehabil 2001;23:245-253.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11336097

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