Stroke Impact Scale (SIS)
What It Measures
The Stroke Impact Scale asks a stroke survivor how much difficulty they have had over the past two weeks, across the full range of ways a stroke changes a life. It was built partly from what stroke survivors and their caregivers said mattered, which is why it covers emotion, communication, and social roles rather than just physical function.
Fifty-nine items sit in eight domains: strength, hand function, activities of daily living, mobility, communication, emotion, memory and thinking, and participation. Each is rated on a five-point scale, and each domain converts to a 0-to-100 score where higher means less difficulty. A final visual analogue question asks the person to rate their overall recovery from 0 to 100.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: The SIS is copyrighted and a license must be negotiated and executed before use.
Learn More: The current version is 3.0, which cut five items from the 64-item version 2.0 following Rasch analysis — so a reference to a 64-item SIS is the older version. Two further options: the SIS-16 is a 16-item physical-function short form drawn from the four physical domains, and proxy versions exist for both when a person cannot self-report.
