Rehabilitation outcomes: values, methodologies and applications.
BACKGROUND
Just what defines a 'good' outcome in rehabilitation has been a much-debated issue. Indeed, this question remains a major focus in research, clinical practice and policy (with funding in many countries now being linked to outcomes achieved rather than outputs or services provided). Despite this rather constant attention, complexity, contention and confusion remain.


OBJECTIVE
This special issue presents 10 papers that take a fresh look at some of the long-standing problems concerning rehabilitation outcomes and, proposes novel ways to reconsider things and move forward.


RESULTS
In this article, we provide a brief commentary on key issues raised by authors all of which focus on one or more of the following three key themes: the place of values in selecting and targeting outcomes; novel methodologies that may usefully inform measurement of outcome and finally; application of the thinking about outcomes in specific examples.


CONCLUSIONS
The papers in this special issue address a number of key issues concerning the evaluation of outcomes in rehabilitation. In so doing, some of the prevalent assumptions underpinning common approaches are questioned and novel ways forward are proposed.
McPherson
Kathryn M
KM
Health and Rehabilitation Research Institute, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand. kathryn.mcpherson@aut.ac.nz
Taylor
William J
WJ
Leplege
Alain
A
D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D012107:Research Design