Brief Symptom Inventory norms for spinal cord injury.

Investigated the effects of spinal cord injury (SCI) upon a person's response to the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) by analyzing differences across item-response distributions from 225 Ss with SCI (aged 17–68 yrs) vs a nonpatient normative sample of 719 Ss. The study also developed more appropriate BSI normative data for persons with SCI. Because Ss' time since injury varied at time of BSI administration, normative scores were provided within 3 groupings: at discharge from the hospital; 0–24 mo post-discharge; and beyond 24 mo. Results show that SCI Ss had higher BSI scores when compared with Ss in the normative sample. These differences were particularly significant across 8 BSI items that reflected actual SCI physical and psychosocial symptoms. SCI Ss reported more distress during the period immediately following discharge to 24 mo. Overall, BSI scores tended to be lower at discharge and after 24 mo post-discharge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)