International consultation on incontinence questionnaire – Urinary incontinence short form ICIQ-UI SF: Validation of its use in a Danish speaking population of municipal employees

INTRODUCTION: Worldwide, the estimated prevalence of urinary incontinence is 8.7%. Urinary incontinence is more frequent in women than in men. Posing the right questions is crucial, when diagnosing urinary incontinence, but also to evaluate the need of treatment and treatment effect. Therefore, reliable and validated questionnaires within this area are needed. Even though the International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire–Urinary Incontinence Short Form (ICIQ-UI SF) has been used on a daily basis in the Danish Urogynaecological Database since 2006, it has not yet been validated in a Danish population of both men and women. OBJECTIVE: To test the reliability and validity of the Danish version of the ICIQ-UI SF in a Danish speaking population of men and women among municipal employees. METHODS: Content validity was evaluated with semi-structured interviews. A quantitative field test was performed, in which the questionnaire was distributed electronically to municipal workers by E-mail. Statistical methods included item characteristics (missings, kurtosis and skewness), internal consistency (Chronbach’s alfa), test-retest (ICC), construct validity (known group validation), and floor and ceiling effect. RESULTS: A number of 1814 Danish municipal workers completed the questionnaire. Of the total number of responders, 426 were invited to complete the questionnaire twice (for test-retest) and 215 (50.5%) of these completed the questions again two weeks later. Statistical analyses of the ICIQ-UI SF demonstrated no floor and ceiling effects, skewness was zero and kurtosis 0.00–0.49. Cronbach’s alfa was 0.87 and intraclass correlation coefficient 0.73. Two out of three hypotheses were accepted in the known-groups validation. CONCLUSION: This study offers an adaptation of the ICIQ-UI SF to a Danish setting. The Danish ICIQ-UI SF demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity. However, clinicians should consider the relatively high measurement error.