ICF Australian User Guide V1.0

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5.    Activities and Participation: application in Australia

5.6    The 'information matrix'

WHO states that the information gathered from the list of Activities and Participation, suitably qualified, provides an information matrix, recording performance and capacity in each of the life domains (WHO 2001:14).

If option (b) or (d) is adopted, then an expanded information matrix is created.

If, for instance, users opted to use the qualifiers described above, to delineate Activities and Participation, then codes for both Activities and Participation would be recorded in the following format:

• axxxx.q_pq_c - the first qualifier being difficulty with Activity in the current environment and the second being difficulty in a standard or optimum environment; if qualifiers for assistance are developed (see Section 5.5) these would be additional.

• pxxxx.q_pq_c - the first qualifier would relate to extent of Participation and the second to Participation in an optimum (or standard) environment; if qualifiers for satisfaction are developed (see Section 5.5) these would be additional.

As outlined in Section 5.1, these qualifiers (recorded measures) can only be interpreted if the environment is also recorded - whether the environment is current, optimum or standard, and whether it is a facilitator or barrier (using the qualifiers offered by the ICF).

The expanded matrix could then look like Table 5.2 (drawn to correspond to Option (b) and Table 5.1). The 'assistance' and 'satisfaction' qualifiers are not yet included in the expanded matrix but are recommended for use by Australian users.

Table 5.2: Expanded information matrix for Option (b) - some A-P overlap

Key: (shading is illustrative only, not a recommended split of the domains)

* 'Assistance' may be a set of supplementary measures or qualifiers, reflecting the multi-dimensional nature of 'assistance' (see Section 5.3)

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