Introduction

This chapter presents an array of instruments that profess to do the job of assessing participation and social role; the difficult decisions are those of selecting the instrument that best measures what needs to be measured for a given purpose and determining who is the best person to measure it. In recognition of the importance of “who does the assessing” a number of researchers have been critical of extant instruments of handicap/participation, “which do not reflect an individual’s perception and needs, but are normative and focus on general abilities, tasks and roles”. These and other researchers have adopted a client- or patient-centred approach to assessing participation, and a number of such scales are featured in this chapter. A small number of scales developed for the acquired brain impairment population do provide a dual view of participation, incorporating both societal and client-centred perspectives of participation.