Comparing the Quality of Life After Brain Injury-Overall Scale (QOLIBRI-OS) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) as Outcome Measures for Traumatic Brain Injury Research.

It is important to measure quality of life (QoL) after traumatic brain injury (TBI), yet limited studies have compared QoL inventories. In N=2,579 TBI, orthopedic trauma control, and healthy friend control participants, we compared the Quality of Life After Brain Injury-Overall Scale (QOLIBRI-OS), developed for TBI patients, to the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), an index of generic life satisfaction. We tested the hypothesis that group differences (TBI and orthopedic trauma versus healthy friend controls) would be larger for the QOLIBRI-OS than the SWLS and that the QOLIBRI-OS would manifest more substantial changes over time in the injured groups, demonstrating more relevance of the QOLIBRI-OS to traumatic injury recovery. (1) compared the group differences (TBI vs. orthopedic trauma control vs. friend control) in QoL as indexed by SWLS versus QOLIBRI-OS and (2) characterized changes across time in these two inventories across 1 year in these three groups. Our secondary objective was to characterize the relationship between TBI severity and QoL. As compared to healthy friend controls, the QOLIBRI reflected greater reductions in QoL than the SWLS for both the TBI group (all timepoints) and the orthopedic trauma control group (2 weeks and 3 months). The QOLIBRI-OS better captured expected improvements in QoL during the injury recovery course in injured groups, as compared to the SWLS which demonstrated smaller changes over time. TBI severity was not consistently or robustly associated with self-reported QoL. The findings imply that, as compared to the SWLS, the QOLIBRI-OS appears to identify QoL issues more specifically relevant to traumatically injured patients and may be a more appropriate primary QoL outcome measure for research focused on the sequelae of traumatic injuries.