Cell telephone ownership and social integration in persons with spinal cord injury

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the prevalence and demographic characteristics associated with cell telephone ownership and to investigate whether cell telephone ownership has a positive relationship with social integration.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Model Systems.

Participants: Participants (N=7696) with traumatic SCI who were entered into the National SCI Database and completed a follow-up interview from April 2004 through April 2009.

Interventions: None.

Main outcome measures: Cell telephone ownership; Craig Handicap Assessment Reporting Technique Social Integration subscale.

Results: A total of 73% of participants owned a cell telephone. Persons who were younger, employed, achieved education beyond grade school, and had computer and e-mail access were more likely to own cell telephones. Not owning a cell telephone decreased the likelihood of belonging to the high-social-integration group compared with the low-integration group (odds ratio, .509; 95% confidence interval, .396-.654). Persons with low or medium social integration scores were less likely to own a cell telephone than those who had high social integration scores.

Conclusion: In this study, most participants owned a cell telephone, although 27% did not compared with 13% nonowners in the general population. Owning a cell telephone increased the likelihood of being more socially integrated compared with non-cell telephone ownership.