Application of the Caregiver Indirect and Informal Care Cost Assessment Questionnaire (CIIQ) and the VR-12 in the Context of Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Family caregivers of individuals with spinal cord injury often provide substantial unpaid support and may experience declines in their health and work productivity. Yet, such ‘caregiver burden’ is rarely accounted for in economic analyses – i.e., assessments of the costs and benefits of alternative health care treatments and interventions. This project uses data from the COMPANION feasibility randomized controlled trial (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40998319/) for a case study to demonstrate how two outcome measures can be used in SCI caregiving research. The VR-12 is a tool for measuring health-related quality of life, providing scores that reflect physical and mental aspects of health, as well the ‘values’ that Canadians assign to living in different health states. The Caregiver Indirect and Informal Care Cost Assessment Questionnaire (CIIQ) allows for the estimation of costs associated with informal care and work-related impacts. My work explores how study participants’ VR-12 and CIIQ responses are translated into interpretable outputs and how an analyst’s methodological choices can impact reported findings. For example, I will present findings (and associated interpretations) regarding (i) the multifaceted scoring procedures for VR-12 responses, (ii) how CIIQ responses are converted into weekly informal care hours and productivity loss measures, (iii) the implications of using different costing methods, and (iv) sensitivity analyses where wage assumptions and employment status conventions are varied between reasonable alternatives. This work provides a practical template for including caregiver health and informal care costs in future SCI research.