Cross-cultural translation and validation of the traumatic injuries distress scale – Spanish version

Abstract

Purpose

The Traumatic Injuries Distress Scale is a patient-reported measure capturing experiences of distress following non-catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries. The original English version has shown adequate accuracy for predicting recovery trajectories up to 12 months later. Herein we describe the translation of the English TIDS into the TIDS-Spanish.

Materials and methods

The prototype version was developed through a two-step forwards-back translation involving four independent bilingual speakers. 73 participants (51% female, mean age 47 years, 32% acute) with musculoskeletal pain responded to the prototype through an online platform or in paper format through a single administration. A series of hypotheses including correlation with an external standard and factor structure were tested for both concurrent and factorial validity compared to those of the English version.

Results

Despite an overall higher mean TIDS score in the Spanish-speaking participants compared to the original English development cohort, all hypotheses for concurrent associations with external pain criteria were satisfied and the three-factor structure of the original was replicated in the new TIDS-Spanish (CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.05).

Conclusion

While prospective data collection is needed to explore the equivalence in prognostic validity, all other analyses indicated psychometric equivalence of the new TIDS-Spanish with the original English version.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• The Traumatic Injuries Distress Scale has previously shown prognostic validity for stratifying people with acute musculoskeletal injury into risk-recovery trajectories.

• A Spanish-translated version of the TIDS was developed and evaluated for psychometric equivalence with the original English version.

• Results indicate that we were successful in creating a conceptually and empirically equivalent version of the TIDS for use in Spanish-speaking populations.

Keywords:

• Cross-cultural translation
• psychometrics
• musculoskeletal
• injuries
• pain

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following people who contributed to the early-stage conceptualizations of this project or facilitated the language translations: Dr. Ana Luisa Trejos, Dr. Maureen Simmonds, and Dr. Catherine Ortega.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study was received from Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes (FOTO), a Net Health company that provides outcomes management software solutions for rehabilitation therapists, through the D.L. Hart Memorial Outcomes Research Grant program awarded to DW. DW is the original designer of the Traumatic Injuries Distress Scale and has received consultation fees for services rendered to private entities for accurate implementation of the English version of the tool in practice. Use of the TIDS is free and no author receives licensing, royalty, or other fees from the use of the tool. No entity outside of the authors had any influence on the interpretation or dissemination of results for this study.