Psychometric properties of the Optimal Screening for Prediction of Referral and Outcome Yellow Flags (OSPRO-YF) in patients with lumbar spine pain

Abstract

Study design

Case-control.

Background

There is little information on the psychometric properties of the OSPRO-YF, used to inform treatment decision-making in patients with low back pain.

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to examine the internal consistency reliability and factorial, convergent and known-group construct validity of the 10-item version of the OSPRO-YF.

Methods

Patients with and without a work-related spinal injury were included in the study. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Roland Morris Disability Questionnaires (RMDQ) were used for assessing construct validity.

Results

Seventy injured workers and 50 patients without an active compensation claim participated in the study. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were high for mood, fear avoidance and positive affect/coping at 0.88, 0.93 and 0.92, respectively. Factor analysis of the constructs revealed three sets of latent variables with one construct being eliminated due to low loading. We observed moderate to high associations between the domains and nine psychological constructs of the OSPRO-YF and the theoretically driven scales, with eight constructs being able to differentiate between patients with and without a work-related compensation claim (p values ranging from 0.036 to <0.0001).

Conclusions

The 10-item OSPRO-YF has acceptable reliability and validity.

Keywords:

• Construct validity
• low back pain
• risk factors
• Psychological constructs
• psychosocial flag signs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

This study received ethics approval from the Human Ethics Research Board of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada: REB# 167-2017.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Practice Based Research funds of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.