Cross-Cultural Validation of the 5-Item Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology to the Arabic Language in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

PURPOSE: A simple measure to assess drug adherence in Saudi patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is required. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the 5-Item Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology (CQR5) into Arabic. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The questionnaire was translated and culturally adapted to Arab patients in six steps: initial translation, synthesis of the translation, back translation, expert committee review, test of the pre-final version, and development of the Arabic CQR5 (ACQR-5). The resulting version was tested for validity in patients with RA. RESULTS: A total of 103 adult patients with RA were recruited from rheumatology clinics at a university hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After extensive translation, the final tool (CQR) was piloted in 15 patients. The final validation was performed with 88 patients. Of these, 80 (90.9%) were female and 43.2% were seropositive. The mean (±SD) age and disease duration were 50 (±13) and 11.4 (±8.2) years, respectively. Cronbach’s alpha reliability was 0.886, and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy for factor analysis was 0.870 (p<0.001). The mean ACQR-5 was 17.78 (2.70), with 14 (15.9%) classified as low adherents and the remaining 74 (84.1%) as high adherents. Binary logistic regression revealed that increasing age (odds ratio [OR] 1.082, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.025–1.142, p=0.005) and a trend toward the presence of other comorbidities (OR 3.111, 95% CI: 0.961–10.070, p=0.058) were associated with low adherence. CONCLUSION: ACQR-5 is a simple and feasible tool for identifying adherence levels in patients with RA in Saudi Arabia. A high level of adherence was observed in this study. Additional studies are required to assess ACQR-5 validity and adherence levels in a larger, more diverse population.