Translation, Validation, and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of an Arabic Version of the "Sleep Disturbances Scale for...

This study aimed to translate, validate, and adapt an Arabic version of the "Sleep Disturbances Scale for Children" (SDSC).

The process involved translation, synthesis, supervision, and back-translation, followed by expert committee review and pretesting. Psychometric testing included an online questionnaire on socio-demographic characteristics, the Arabic and English versions of SDSC, launched online from June to August 2022. Cronbach's alpha coefficient, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and Cohen's Kappa coefficient were measured to evaluate internal consistency, overall questionnaire reliability, and inter-judge reliability of each questionnaire item, respectively. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was then conducted to study construct validity.

409 respondents, predominantly mothers, participated in this study. The mean score of the average of the English and Arabic versions was 1.78 ± 0.61 and 1.66 ± 0.51, respectively. The Cronbach's alpha was estimated at 0.92 for the English version and 0.88 for the Arabic version. ICC showed good reliability and agreement between the two tests, which was 0.82. EFA allowed the extraction of 7 underlying factors in the questionnaire.

Our Arabic version of the SDSC is a reliable, valid, and adapted tool, allowing the assessment of sleep disorders in children in the Arab world.