Assessing Risk of Injury in People With Mental Retardation Living in an Intermediate Care Facility

摘要

A brief instrument to assess risk of injury was applied retrospectively for 2 years and prospectively for 1 year to all people living in a large ICF/MR. Results suggest that the percentage of people who experienced an injury significantly increased across the levels of increasing risk indicated by the assessment. Furthermore, people who experienced an injury had significantly higher risk scores than those who did not. Using psychometric analyses, we found a mean correlation of .79 for interrater reliability and .90 for test–retest reliability on individual items and correlations of .91 and .95, respectively, on total score. We conclude that the assessment has promise as a reliable and valid method for predicting injury risk level.