2.2. Instrument/Questionnaires

The questionnaire used for data collection consisted of three main parts, demography and background, Quality of Life assessment, and a section with questions assessing social inclusion and economic situation.

The demographic information collected was sex, age, geographical area of residence and living arrangements, foreign heritage, civil status, level of education, employment status, and experience of mobility-related disabilities or other disabilities or impairments. The question relating to the presence of mobility-related disability divided the participants into two main groups for the main comparisons. I.e., having a self-reported mobility-related disability (MOBDIS) or not (No-MOBDIS).

The World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment, abbreviated version (WHOQOL-BREF), addressed the QoL. It is a 26-item version of the WHOQOL-100. The WHOQOL was developed by WHO and had a global definition of QoL and measured the perceived effects of disease and health interventions on the individual’s QoL. The WHOQOL and WHOQOL-BREF have been field-tested and validated in multiple countries and contexts. The WHOQOL-BREF produces four domain scores: Physical Health, Psychological, Social relationship, and Environment. Additionally, three items are examined separately: an individual’s overall perception of QoL (General QoL), their overall perception of their health satisfaction (HS), and a question about the current general health state (GH). Domain and item scores are scaled positively, i.e., each item is answered on a scale from 1 to 5, where a higher score denotes higher levels. The mean score of items within each domain was used to calculate the domain score [15]. The domain scores are presented as a score value between 4 and 20, and the item ratings are presented as a value between 1 and 5. Permission was obtained from the WHO to use the WHOQOL-BREF.

A Social Inclusion Score (SIS) was calculated to measure community inclusion and participation. SIS was based on seven questions deriving from community-based rehabilitation (CBR) indicators, covering interpersonal relationships and community participation, two domains important for understanding social inclusion [11]. The CBR indicators were developed by WHO and the International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC) to examine differences in health, education, social life, and empowerment between individuals with and without disabilities within the same community [40]. The SIS is positively scaled and ranges between 7 and 35. This study used the SIS as a total score and a dichotomized variable. The CBR Indicators are not currently translated into Swedish but were translated into Swedish by the authors of this article.

The economic situation was assessed by an Economic Situation Score (ESS). This score was created for the study and consisted of five questions concerning lively hood and economic standing. The ESS is positively scaled and ranges between 5 and 25. Two of the questions in ESS originated from CBR indicators [40]. One of the questions, relating to the existence of a cash margin (12,000 SEK), originated from Statistics Sweden (Swedish: SCB), and one question was a demographic question used in other studies [41]. The last question was created for this study. The wording and scales for the ESS and SIS scores are available in Supplementary Materials Table S1.