Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Validity, and Reliability of the Persian Version of the Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire

STUDY DESIGN: Observational study. PURPOSE: To cross-culturally translate the Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire (OMPQ) into Persian and then evaluate its psychometric properties (reliability, validity, ceiling, and flooring effects). OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE: To the authors' knowledge, prior to this study there has been no validated instrument to screen the risk of chronicity in Persian-speaking patients with low back pain (LBP) in Iran. The OMPQ was specifically developed as a self-administered screening tool for assessing the risk of LBP chronicity. METHODS: The forward–backward translation method was used for the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the original questionnaire. In total, 202 patients with subacute LBP completed the OMPQ and the pain disability questionnaire (PDQ), which was used to assess convergent validity. 62 patients completed the OMPQ a week later as a retest. RESULTS: Slight changes were made to the OMPQ during the translation/cultural adaptation process; face validity of the Persian version was obtained. The Persian OMPQ showed excellent test–retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient=0.89). Its internal consistency was 0.71, and its convergent validity was confirmed by good correlation coefficient between the OMPQ and PDQ total scores (r=0.72, p<0.05). No ceiling or floor effects were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The Persian version of the OMPQ is acceptable for the target society in terms of face validity, construct validity, reliability, and consistency. It is therefore considered a useful instrument for screening Iranian patients with LBP.