Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire in German

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Psychometrics
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Growing interest in presenteeism as a significant productivity loss for organizations.
• Estimated substantial costs associated with presenteeism globally.
• Need for a validated German version of the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) for international research comparability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate and culturally adapt the Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (HPQ) into German.
• To validate the German HPQ for measuring presenteeism and overall performance.
• To facilitate international comparative research on workplace productivity and health.

Main Methods:

• Translation of the HPQ from English to German.
• Cultural adaptation and cognitive debriefing through interviews.
• Testing the structural validity of presenteeism items and discriminative validity.

Main Results:

• Identification of 14 item-related problems during cognitive debriefing, with 57% related to comprehension.
• Acceptance of two out of three hypotheses for discriminative validity.
• Inability to discriminate between individuals with and without chronic disease based on presenteeism measures.

Conclusions:

• The German HPQ demonstrates satisfactory cross-cultural validity.
• The German HPQ is suitable for assessing overall performance and presenteeism.
• The questionnaire can be utilized in specific samples experiencing health problems.