An Albanian translation of a questionnaire for self-reported tinnitus assessment

Abstract

Objective

To our knowledge, there is no published study investigating the characteristics of people experiencing tinnitus in Albania. Such a study would be important, providing the basis for further research in this region and contributing to a wider understanding of tinnitus heterogeneity across different geographic locations. The main objective of this study was to develop an Albanian translation of a standardised questionnaire for tinnitus research, namely the European School for Interdisciplinary Tinnitus Research-Screening Questionnaire (ESIT-SQ). A secondary objective was to assess its applicability and usefulness by conducting an exploratory survey on a small sample of the Albanian tinnitus population.

Design and study sample

Three translators were recruited to create the Albanian ESIT-SQ translation following good practice guidelines. Using this questionnaire, data from 107 patients attending otolaryngology clinics in Albania were collected.

Results

Participants reporting various degrees of tinnitus symptom severity had distinct phenotypic characteristics. Application of a random forest approach on this preliminary dataset showed that self-reported hearing difficulty, and tinnitus duration, pitch and temporal manifestation were important variables for predicting tinnitus symptom severity.

Conclusions

Our study provided an Albanian translation of the ESIT-SQ and demonstrated that it is a useful tool for tinnitus profiling and subgrouping.

Keywords:

• ESIT-SQ
• translation
• questionnaire
• Albania
• tinnitus heterogeneity
• classification models

Author contributions

A.D and E.G. contributed equally to this work. Conceptualisation: A.D.; Questionnaire translation: A.D., B.Q.; Data analysis: A.D., E.G.; writing-original draft preparation: A.D., E.G., M.M., Th.P.; writing-review and editing: D.H., F.H., M.R., R.P.; supervision: R.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from A.D, upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This publication was supported by funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement number 722064 (European School for Interdisciplinary Tinnitus Research).