Functional Independence as a Predictor of Social Integration of Persons with Spinal Cord Injury

Trgovčević, Sanja and Milićević, Milena (2014) Functional Independence as a Predictor of Social Integration of Persons with Spinal Cord Injury. In: Education and Rehabilitation of Adult Persons with Disabilities: thematic collection of international importance. Medicinski fakultet, Foča, pp. 205-217. ISBN 978-99955-733-9-3

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Abstract

Social integration represents the final and most important goal of the rehabilitation process. In order for individual to successfully and independently perform daily activities, some level of functional independence is necessary. In this paper the research question was asked: Is social integration determined by the functional independence? The study included 100 subjects of both gender, aged 18-65 years, residing in the territory of the Republic of Serbia. The control group (K) consisted of 56 patients without spinal cord injury or other impairments. The experimental group (E-1) consisted of 23 patients diagnosed with injury of the thoracic, lumbar or sacral part of the spinal cord injury (paraplegia). The experimental group (E-2) consisted of 21 subjects with injury of cervical (neck), part of the spinal cord (tetraplegia, quadriplegia). The aim of this section study was to determine the degree of correlation between functional independence and social integration of adults with spinal cord injury. The instruments used consisted of General socio-demographic questionnaire, Test for the assessment of functional independence and Social integration questionnaire. The degree of functional independence showed significant differences among subjects with and without spinal cord injury, but also the differences between subjects with different level of injury. Also, the functional independence showed a high degree of correlation with social integration. Most of the independent variables of functional independence provided a statistically significant correlation with the independent variable of social integration.

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