Functional Outcome Questionnaire for Aphasia: Overview and preliminary psychometric evaluation

Abstract

Objective: To perform a preliminary evaluation of a questionnaire designed to assess functional outcomes of treatment for aphasia. Methods: The Functional Outcome Questionnaire for Aphasia (FOQ-A) is an inventory consisting of 32 caregiver-completed items rating the person with stroke's ability to perform various communication behaviors on a 5-point scale. The total score for the FOQ-A is reported as a mean of all completed items. The FOQ-A was administered by research assistants to caregivers of patients with left hemisphere stroke (n = 18). Results: The FOQ-A showed acceptable initial reliability and validity properties. As predicted, the FOQ-A displayed high positive correlations with standardized functional communication measures. The FOQ-A also showed only weak associations with other measures (health-related quality of life, caregiver strain). Conclusions: Overall results of our preliminary psychometric examination of the FOQ-A were promising. The findings suggested that the FOQ-A may be a sensitive measure of functional communication abilities and does not appear to be biased heavily by caregiver strain. Plans for further evaluation of the FOQ-A are discussed.

The Influence of Phonomotor Treatment on Word Retrieval Abilities in 26 Individuals With Chronic Aphasia: An Open Trial

“…Finally, in order to determine whether treatment generalized to indicators of quality of life, data were collected using the participant-rated Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life scale (SAQOL; Hilari & Byng, 2001; communication items only) and the caregiver-rated Functional Outcomes Questionnaire (FOQ; Glueckauf et al, 2003).…”

Development of the Aboriginal Communication Assessment After Brain Injury (ACAABI): A screening tool for identifying acquired communication disorders in Aboriginal Australians

“…Functional Communication Scale Drummond & Boss, 2004 13. Functional Outcome Questionnaire for Aphasia (FOQ-A) Glueckauf et al, 2003;Ketterson et al, 2008 14.…”

The importance of situated language use for aphasia rehabilitation

“…• Communicative Effectiveness Index (CETI; Lomas, Pickard, Bester, Elbard, Finlayson & Zoghaib, 1989) • Assessment of Communicative Effectiveness in Severe Aphasia (ACESA; Cunningham, Farrow, Davies & Lincoln, 1995) • Functional Outcome Questionnaire for Aphasia (FOQ-A; Glueckauf, Blonder, Ecklund-Johnson, Maher, Crosson & Gonzalez-Rothi, 2003) • Communicative Activity Log (CAL; Pulvermuller & Berthier, 2008) • Communication Outcome after Stroke, client and carer version (COAST and carer COAST; Long, Hesketh & Bowen, 2009;Long, Hesketh, Paszek, Booth & Bowen, 2008) • Aphasia Communication Outcome Measure (ACOM; Doyle, Hula, Hula, Ross, Wambaugh, Schumacher & Roehrig, 2012) Linguistic analysis of connected speech…”

“…Barnes & Bloch (2018) argue that the ICF is not able to capture everyday communication as it gives a limited view of communication as a fundamentally individual competence, that can be standardized separately from different contextual variations. Glueckauf et al (2003) criticised the ASHA-FACS for measuring the degree of independence in communication (i.e. can someone perform a task without help), but not including a measure of communicative success (i.e.…”

“…Functional communication is quantified in these observational profiles as an overall score of ability, effectiveness or independence on a number of behaviours or communicative activities, such as 'expresses feelings', 'tells time', or 'participates in conversations'. They considered by some to be subjective and indirect measures of functional communication (Blomert et al, 1987;Glueckauf et al, 2003;van der Meulen et al, 2010).…”