ABSTRACT
This chapter will review the research related to social skills training for persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI), abstract the specific treatment information from these studies and translate the interventions described in the research into recommendations for clinical practice. This evidence-based review comes from the Brain Injury Special Interest Group (BI-SIG) of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), who conducted evidence-based reviews of the literature regarding cognitive rehabilitation for persons with TBI or stroke, leading to specific recommendations for clinical practice. The search strategies and classification ratings used for the three evidence-based review articles are described in detail in Cicerone et al. (2000, 2005, 2011). The first publication reviewed articles identified in the literature search published through the year 1997 (Cicerone et al., 2000); the second publication updated the review for evidence-based articles published from 1998 through 2002 (Cicerone et al., 2005), and the third update covered research published from 2003 to 2008 (Cicerone et al., 2011). Well-designed, prospective, randomized controlled trials were considered Class I evidence; studies using a prospective design with ‘quasi-randomized’ assignment to treatment conditions were designated as Class Ia studies. Given the inherent difficulty in blinding rehabilitation interventions, blinding of assessments was not considered as criterion for Class I or Ia studies, consistent with all the BI-SIG reviews. Class II studies consisted of prospective, non-randomized cohort studies; retrospective, non-randomized case-control studies; or multiple-baseline studies that permitted a direct comparison of treatment conditions. Clinical series without concurrent controls, or singlesubject designs with adequate quantification and analysis were considered Class III evidence (Cicerone et al., 2011). See Chapter 10 for further discussion of these levels of evidence.
