Stroke Impact Scale

The Stroke Impact Scale was developed at the University of Kansas Medical Center, based on feedback from patients and their caregivers. It measures the aspects of stroke recovery found to be important to patients and caregivers as well as stroke experts. After intensive psychometric testing, the 59-item Stroke Impact Scale Version 3.0 was developed. The 59 questions of the SIS are broken down into eight domains*:

• strength
• hand function
• mobility
• activities of daily living
• emotion
• memory
• communication
• social participation

The assessment of outcomes in individuals after stroke is important for both clinical practice and research, yet there is no consensus on the best measures of stroke outcome. Existing measures have not been sensitive to change in mild strokes and some of the more commonly used measures assess only the physical aspects of stroke. The Stroke Impact Scale (SIS) assesses other dimensions of health related quality of life: emotion, communication, memory and thinking, and social role function.

*The first four of these domains may be combined into one physical domain, but the others must be scored separately. In this way, change may be more clearly tracked based on the patient's particular set of symptoms. The SIS-16 (a 16-item physical dimension instrument) was developed as a brief, stand-alone tool for measuring the physical aspects of stroke recovery.

Hard copy instruments are available at SIS v3.0 (pdf) and SIS-16 (pdf).

SIS International Translations can be obtained at https://www.qolid.org/.

Contact Sue M. Lai, Ph.D. at slai@kumc.edu for more information about use of the Stroke Impact Scale, SIS v3.0 and SIS-16 proxy versions when patients are unable to answer.

The Stroke Impact Scale is a copyrighted instrument. A license must be negotiated and executed prior to use.