Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire

Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric analysis.

To develop the Turkish version of the Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire (FreBAQ-T) and to evaluate its psychometric properties.

There is a growing interest in the role that the disturbance of body perception may lead to long-lasting pain problems such as chronic low back pain (CLBP). The Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire (FreBAQ) is a simple and low-cost way of evaluating disturbed back awareness in people with CLBP.

The FreBAQ was translated from English into Turkish using the forward-backward-forward method. One hundred four participants with low back pain completed the FreBAQ-T. The FreBAQ-T was repeated in 15 participants after 1 week to establish test-retest reliability. Although internal and external construct validity was investigated using Rasch analysis and Spearman correlation coefficient, respectively; reliability was evaluated in terms of internal consistency by Cronbach alpha and Person Separation Index.

All items of the FreBAQ-T were found to fit the Rasch Model (chi-square 6.17 [df = 9], P = 0.723). The internal construct validity was good, overall mean item fit residual was -0.305 (standard deviation: 0.369) and mean person fit residual was -0.290 (standard deviation: 1.349). The reliability was good with Cronbach alpha of 0.87 and Person Separation Index of 0.82. When the test-retest was examined via differential item functioning by time, none of the items showed differential item functioning.

The FreBAQ-T is a valid, reliable, and unidimensional scale for patients with CLBP. This scale will allow assessing back-specific perception in the Turkish population with CLBP.

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