Table 1. Description of the study variables and their measurement scales.

Independent variables	Operational definition	Unit/Values
Age
Sex
Duration of injury		Days for the descriptive analysis Dichotomized in 0 = less than a month and 1 = one month or morefor the regression analysis
SCI severity	AIS Category, with ISNCSCI modifications18	A, B, C, D, E
SCI NLI	AIS Category, with ISNCSCI modifications18	C, HT, LT, L, S
Clinicaltrunk control test	Maximal score achieved in the trunk control test24	Score 0 to 24 points 0–12: Poor trunk control 13–24: Goodtrunk control
Depression	Score obtained on the Beck inventory25	0–16: no depression >16: depression
Dependent variables	Operational definition	Unit/Values
Walking	Score obtained on the item 12 of the SCIM-III26,27	0–3: unable to walk 4–8:able to walk independently
Independence	Score obtained in the SCIM-III26,27	Dependent	Independent
	Item 17 Items 10, 11, 16 Items 1, 4, 15 Item 8 Item 9 Item 2 Items 3, 12, 13, 14 Item 7 Item 6 Item 5	0 0–1 0–1 0–2 0–2 0–3 0–3 0–5 0–6 0–8	1 2 2–3 4–5 4–6 4–6 4–8 8–10 9–15 10

SCI, spinal cord injury; ASIA, American Spinal Injury Association; AIS, ASIA Impairment Scale; ISNCSCI, International Standards for Classification of the Spinal Cord Injury; AIS, ASIA Impairment Scale; NLI, neurologic level of injury; C, cervical; HT, high thoracic; LT, low thoracic; L, lumbar; S, sacral; SCIM-III, Spinal Cord Independence Measure-III.