Article

The objective was to review contemporary and historical rehabilitation-focused
literature on conceptualizations of the environment, broadly defined, and
environmental measures. Data sources included historical nonempirical
American-based literature from 1935 to the present and descriptive and empirical
rehabilitation articles worldwide, retrieved from computerized databases
predominantly from past 10 years depicting a participation-environment
association. Literature selection required relevance to 3 combined topics:
physical disability rehabilitation, participation/community integration, and
impact of environmental barriers and facilitators. The ultimate focus was on
spinal cord injury for recent literature and measures reviewed. Data extraction
was based on author-assessed relevance to both participation and environmental
considerations. Nonempirical literature from last three quarters of a century
suggests an environmental impact on participation, focusing on
"person-environment fit." Recent empirical evidence supports environmental
contributions to participation, but the magnitude of the contribution is low.
Despite the obvious theoretic impact of the environment, scientific demonstration
of environmental contribution to participation restriction or facilitation has
yet to be achieved. Participation-environment interaction could be illustrated
better by (1) taking into account critical elements in environmental measures
(eg, comprehensiveness of approach to environment, scales describing spectrum of
environmental influence, subjective vs objective perspectives), (2) addressing
the concept of participation in a dimension-specific approach, and (3) avoiding
environmental features in construction of participation measures.
CI - Copyright 2010 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS