Validity and Reliability of the Arabic Cough Severity Index

Area of Science:

• Respiratory Medicine
• Clinical Assessment Tools
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Chronic cough significantly impacts patient quality of life.
• Validated assessment tools are crucial for accurate diagnosis and management.
• The Cough Severity Index (CSI) is a valuable tool, but requires Arabic translation and validation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate and validate the Cough Severity Index (CSI) into Arabic, creating the A-CSI.
• To evaluate the reliability and validity of the A-CSI in Arabic-speaking patients with chronic cough.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional, descriptive, questionnaire-based validation study conducted in Saudi Arabia.
• Forward-backward translation of the CSI into Arabic.
• Assessed reliability using Cronbach's alpha and test-retest reliability (ICC).
• Evaluated construct validity via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and discriminant validity using Mann-Whitney U test.

Main Results:

• The A-CSI demonstrated high reproducibility (ICC = 0.896) and excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.966).
• EFA identified three factors explaining 66.41% of the variance, with all items showing communalities > 0.3.
• The A-CSI showed significant discriminant validity between chronic cough patients and healthy controls (p < 0.001).

Conclusions:

• The Arabic Cough Severity Index (A-CSI) is a reliable and valid instrument.
• The A-CSI is suitable for assessing chronic cough in Arabic-speaking populations.
• This validated tool can be utilized in both clinical practice and research.