Impact of CRISP on Self-Efficacy, Loneliness, and Depression

The Multiple Sclerosis Self-Efficacy Scale (MSSS) is designed to measure self-efficacy in people diagnosed with MS. The MSSS incorporates aspects of social interaction and themes related to beliefs of control over future events, which is based on Bandura's definition of self-efficacy (Rigby et al., 2003). The MSSS is a 14 item, six-point Likert scale and participants are asked to rate their level of agreement or disagreement for each item on the scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' (1) to 'strongly agree' (6). Examples of questions include "sometimes I feel embarrassed in public places" or "I have as much independence as I need." Scores can range from 14 (low self-efficacy) to 84 (high self-efficacy).

The UCLA Revised Loneliness Scale was developed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness and is widely used in loneliness research. The scale consists of 20 questions about loneliness asking participants to rate each question from 1 (never) to 4 (always), higher scores indicating greater degrees of loneliness.

The Chicago Multiscale Depression Inventory will be used to assess symptoms of depression. The CMDI is a 50-item self-report measure that includes three subscales representing different types of depression symptoms: vegetative, mood, and evaluative. Each item on the scale consists of a single word or brief phrase describing feelings or experiences and participants rate each item on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely).

The Performance Scales (PS) is a self-reported measure of MS disease status assessing mobility, hand function, vision, fatigue, cognitive symptoms, bladder/bowel, sensory symptoms, spasticity, pain, depression, and tremor/coordination. Each scale of the PS (with the exception of the mobility scale) is a 6 item ordinal scale and participants are asked to describe their functioning in each area as compared to before they developed MS. Scores range from normal (0) to total disability in specified area (5) with higher scores indicating greater perceived disability. The mobility scale has a range from normal (0) to total gait disability or bedridden (6) and asks participants to choose the category that describes their walking ability in the past four weeks.

The Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ) was developed to assess community integration after an injury with questions about home integration, social integration and productive activities. The CIQ is a 15 item self-report measure. The basis for scoring is by the frequency of performing specific activities and providing subtotals for each category of community integration as well as an overall score.