Cultural adaptation and validation of the “Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire” for the Portuguese population

BACKGROUND: The lack of instruments to assess the level of physical activity in pregnant women, led to the development of the PPAQ (Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire), a self-administered questionnaire, which has already been translated in several countries and has already been used in several studies. AIM(S): Translate and adapt the PPAQ into Portuguese and test its reliability and validity. METHODS: An analytical observational study was carried out. Linguistic and semantic equivalence was performed through translation and back-translation and content validity was tested by a panel of experts. To test reliability, a test-retest was performed on a sample of 184 pregnant women, with an interval of 7 days and the ICC was used. To test the criterion validity, Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) was used between the PPAQ and the accelerometer, in a sample of 226 pregnant women. FINDINGS: The questionnaire was considered comprehensive. The ICC values of Reliability were: total score (0.77); sedentary activities (0.87); light-intensity activities (0.76); moderate-intensity activities (0.76); vigorous-intensity activities (0.70). For criterion validity was obtained a coefficient correlation of r = -0.030, considered weak and negative, for total activity. DISCUSSION: This study describes the translation and validation process of the PPAQ questionnaire from English to Portuguese. The final version of the PPAQ was considered as a valid instrument in terms of content to measure physical activity and was referred to as being simple to apply and easy to understand. CONCLUSION: The PPAQ has content validity, excellent reliability and weak criterion validity, as in the original version.