Testing and development of an instrument for self-report of participation and related environmental factors - Your Ideas about Participation and Environment (YIPE) among adults with brain injury.

Purpose: To examine the usability of the self-report instrument, Your Ideas about Participation and Environment (YIPE), among adults with a brain injury by exploring the value and acceptability of the instrument.

Methods: A qualitative descriptive research design was used for the purpose of testing and developing the YIPE for use among adults with a brain injury. The study involved administering the YIPE followed by in-depth interviewing about the experience of taking the instrument with seven adults with a brain injury, recruited through a community-based support service organization. A descriptive thematic approach was used to analyse the content of the interview data, categorize common ideas and identify areas for improvement within the instrument.

Results: Participants were generally positive about the importance of the participation and environment topics and willing to engage in self report. The YIPE (2012), resulting from changes made to the language and structure, was found to be more useable, valued and accepted by these participants than the previous version, YIPE (2011).

Conclusions: The YIPE was found to be a useful tool among study participants. The YIPE topics were found to have importance and relevance when considering participants' satisfaction with areas of life and aspects of environment requiring change. More development of the tool is required in terms of the wording, format and method of administration to improve the overall usability of the instrument. Implications for Rehabilitation The preliminary results from this small sample study illustrated that people with brain injury were able to use an International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health-based tool, and confirmed the importance of considering both participation and the environment together. People with cognitive impairments associated with brain injury reported on areas of everyday life where they were satisfied or dissatisfied. They related their satisfaction to environmental factors that were facilitators or barriers to valued everyday activities. The opportunity to choose important life areas promotes individuals' motivation to engage and enables service providers to tailor rehabilitation. In the course of the two stages of research, it was necessary to make minor modifications to the language, structure and scoring system of the tool, to simplify the task and shorten the time to interview participants.