•  
  •  
 
Chulalongkorn Medical Journal

Abstract

Background: Thousands of patients suffer a head injury in Thailand. Some might recover completely but manyare still at risk of having post-concussion syndromes (PCS) for months or years after injury. PCS has a poordiagnosis. The Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) is one of the instruments usedfor evaluating PCS.Objectives: This study aimed to analyze the factors of PCS, and to validate the psychometric properties of RPQin Thai people after a head injury.Method: In a secondary analysis of data drawn from two original studies, 253 head injury patients who visitedNeurosurgical Clinics of King Bhumibol Adulyadej Hospital, and the Police General Hospital, Thailand wererecruited. Glasgow Coma Scores of all patients were 13 - 15. Data were collected using demographic andillness-related questionnaires, and the RPQ.Results: The RPQ achieved adequate internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88. An exploratory factoranalysis with Varimax Rotation found 4 factors. First, “psychological symptoms” which consisted of seven items,and three items loaded to factor 2 called “cognitive symptoms”. As for physical symptoms or factor 3, three items,and three were loaded. Finally, three items corresponded with factor 4 as “vision-related symptoms”. The fourfactorstructure was based on the criteria of scree plot, eigenvalue, and factor interpretability in relation to clinicalrelevance.Conclusion: This study confirmed both reliability and validity of the Thai-version RPQ. Future studies using aconfirmatory factor analysis in new samples are needed to further assess the psychometric properties of the RPQ.

DOI

10.58837/CHULA.CMJ.63.4.4

First Page

239

Last Page

244

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.