URL:

http://www.neuroskills.com/

Description:

The Traumatic Brain Injury Resource Guide (TBIRG) is designed to serve clinicians and researchers in the field of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and its outcomes, as well as to provide information on TBIs to the general public. This site is operated by the Center for Neuro Skills, a for-profit company based in California and Texas that is involved in rehabilitation and long-term assisted care programs for those dealing with TBIs.

Types of Information or Instruments:

This site provides information on four instruments: the Rancho Los Amigos-Revised Scale, the Glasgow Coma Scale, the Disability Rating Scale, and the Independent Living Scale. The first three of these are located by selecting "Assessment Scales" under the "Tools" drop-down menu on the left side of the site homepage.

Adjacent to the name of each instrument is a short description of that scale, in which is embedded a hyperlink that opens a webpage with more detailed information on the instrument. The ten levels of the Rancho Los Amigos-Revised Scale are described in a bulleted format; however, no information is provided on scoring or psychometric properties of the Scale. Scoring information accompanies the other two instruments, but no descriptive information or discussion of their psychometric properties is provided. No journal references are provided for the Ranchos Los Amigos-Revised Scale or the Glasgow Coma Scale, while a single reference is provided for the Disability Rating Scale.

A fourth instrument, the Independent Living Scale, can be found under the "Tools" menu by selecting "ILS." The webpage offers a brief description of the ILS, a link to abstracts of published articles providing psychometric and scale use information on the ILS (selected articles are available free for download as PDF files, while others may be obtained in print from the Center for a fee), and a link to download the ILS as a PDF file.

Quantity of Instruments:

There are four instruments described on the site, but only three of these are actually available for copying/downloading.

Quality of Instrument Descriptions:

The site provides only the instrument items; no descriptive information for the instruments is available.

Quality of Psychometric Information:

Psychometric information is provided for the Independent Living Scale only, and it is limited.

Scale accessibility:

The instruments are easily accessible, except for the Rancho Los Amigos-Revised Scale.

Site provides actual scale items:

The site does provide actual scale items.

User-friendly navigation:

Navigation is easy.

Other types of Information:

Half of the site is oriented toward selling the Center's services to the general public. To the Center's credit, other sections of the site do not shy away from sophisticated topics in the area of TBI research; clinicians and researchers will find this sophistication appealing.

Searching for current research articles exclusive to the TBI field is made easy by the site's article keyword search engine, located by selecting "Tools" and then "Article Search." There is also a web-based message board, but it appears to be frequented mainly by people who have had TBIs.

Hints:

These instruments are presented for use by those who engage in limited, specific research in traumatic brain injuries. Only the ILS is proprietary and unique to this site; the others have been publicly available elsewhere for many years.

Category:

Disease-specific Outcomes > Neurologic Conditions