Stroke rehabilitation and the physical environment of rehabilitation facilities: behaviour observations and patient reported outcomes

This data set is from data collected from stroke survivors admitted to a rehabilitation ward after stroke. Twenty patients participated from one rehabiliation facility (45% female, mean age = 73 years) and 16 from another rehabilitation facility (37.5% female, mean age = 67.2 years). 

Datafile 1 (pt_reported) includes the following patient reported outcome measures. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire (Buysse et al., 1989) – adapted to refer to the past week rather than the past month to correspond more closely with the participant’s inpatient stay – and a suite of emotional well-being questionnaires: the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale (MSBS; Fahlman et al., 2013); and a visual analogue scale (VAS) designed to assess the extent to which participants thought the hospital environment motivated them to participate in rehabilitation practice and activity from zero (strongly demotivating) to 100 (strongly motivating). Participants could choose to complete the booklet independently or with help, at any point in their participation, and over as many sessions as needed. 

Datafile 2 (activity) includes behaviour observation of the same participants who completed the patient reported outcome measures. To explore stroke survivor behaviour in the environment, data were collected about each participants’ activity (physical, cognitive, and social) and sleep. Behavioural mapping was used to observe their activity (Janssen, et al., 2014). Observations were made every 10 minutes over a nine-hour period on any weekday, generating 54 discrete observation epochs per participant including three randomly allocated observer breaks. At each epoch, the observer recorded the participant’s physical, cognitive, and social activity, location, and who they were with. Physical activity included any purposeful physical movement. Cognitive activity was defined as being engaged in a cognitive task (e.g., reading, puzzles, listening to music), and social activity included any verbal or non-verbal interaction. If the participant could not be observed (e.g., observer break, participant in the bathroom), staff or the participant were asked to retrospectively estimate activity.

Full description of study methods can be found in PhD thesis referenced below, accessible via this link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/242046

R. Lipson-Smith, Space for recovery after stroke: Exploring the role of the physical environment in inpatient rehabilitation facilities, The University of Melbourne PhD thesis 2020