THE HEAD-INJURY FAMILY INTERVIEW - A CLINICAL AND RESEARCH TOOL

This article describes the Head Injury Family Interview (HI-FI), a fiv e-part structured interview designed to gather clinical and research d ata on persons with head injury and their family members. The HI-FI wa s developed over a 10-year period at the Research and Training Center on Head Injury and Stroke of New York University Medical Center to tra ck outcomes of persons recovering from traumatic brain injury, with in put from both the injured person and significant others, and to docume nt the impact of the injury on the family system. The structure, conte nts, rationale, and development of the interviews are described, as we ll as its clinical utility and research potential. In addition, the st atistical properties of one particular instrument within the interview , the Problem Checklist, are detailed and data presented from a multi- center study.