Transcultural adaptation and validation of Hindi version of Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale

Abstract

Purpose: To transculturally adapt the Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale for Hindi-speaking population and examine its psychometric properties in patients with low back pain.

Materials and methods: The Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale was translated and cross-culturally adapted into Hindi following international guidelines. Hindi version of the scale was completed by 120 patients with low back pain and 60 healthy controls. Patients with low back pain were also administered the Hindi-Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire and Visual Analog Scale. Psychometric evaluation included test–retest reliability, convergent and discriminative validity. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to determine the factor structure.

Results: The factorial analysis revealed a four-factor solution (bending/carrying, ambulation/reach, prolonged postures and rest). Convergent validity was confirmed by high correlation of Hindi Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale to the Hindi version of Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (r = 0.77 and p < 0.001) as well as Visual Analog Scale (r = 0.682 and p < 0.001) scores. Discriminative validity was established by significantly different scores for patients with low back pain and the healthy controls (35.36 ± 18.6 vs. 9.13 ± 6.08 and p < 0.001). The translated version of the scale showed remarkable internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.98) and the intraclass correlation coefficient of test–retest reliability was excellent (ICC_2,1=0.96). MDC₉₅ and SEM scores obtained were 10.28 and 3.71, respectively.

Conclusion: The Hindi version of Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale has good test–retest reliability, discriminative and convergent validity and is appropriate for clinical and research use in Hindi-speaking low back pain patients.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Linguistically and culturally adapted questionnaires help researchers make adequate inferences about instruments measuring health and quality of life.

• The translated version would serve as a valid research tool allowing comparability of data across cultures thus, providing opportunities for large multicenter, multicountry trials.

• A Hindi Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale version will help to improve the quality and efficacy of assessment of low back pain by developing in patients, a better understanding of the items which can be easily correlated with the activities of daily living.

Keywords:

• Psychometrics
• rehabilitation
• questionnaire
• functional disability
• low back pain

Acknowledgements

The authors hereby acknowledge the contribution of the staff at the Centre for Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, for facilitating data collection for this study. Furthermore, we would like to thank the participants.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding

No funding was obtained for the present study.