Translation, adaptation and validation of a Spanish version of the Japanese orthopaedic association cervical myelopathy questionnaire

Abstract

Study design: Translation and psychometric testing of a questionnaire. Objective: Translation, adaptation and validation of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Cervical Myelopathy Evaluation Questionnaire (JOACMEQ) to the Spanish language. Summary of Background data: Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) has a clear impact on quality of life. The Japanese Orthopaedic Association Cervical Myelopathy Evaluation Questionnaire (JOACMEQ) is a self-administered questionnaire used to assess DCM related disability and its impact on quality of life. It is compound of five domains: Cervical Function; Upper Extremity Function; Lower Extremity Function; Blader Function and Quality of Life (QoL). Despite its increasing use, the JOACMEQ has not yet been translated and validated for Spanish speaking patients. Methods: A total of 180 patients completed the Spanish version. Of these, 145 (80%) had DCM (mean age 62.53; SD 9.92), while 35 had neck pain without DCM (age 52.71; SD 10.29). The psychometric properties measured were: construct validity, internal consistency, reproducibility, concurrent validity and discriminatory ability. Results: We recruited 145 patients with DCM (mean age 62.5) and 35 with cervical pain (mean age 52.7). After Factor analysis our data showed very strong construct validity with questions strongly loaded and clustered for five factors. Internal consistency proved high (Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.912). The ICC showed very good reproducibility for all domain (ICC range between 0.85 and 0.95). A high correlation between the JOACMEQ quality of life domain and NDI was also found (Spearman’s ρ = - 0.847, P < 0.01) confirming concurrent validity. The ROC curves proved to be significant in the upper (AUC = 0.65, P = 0.006) and lower (AUC = 0.661, P = 0.003) extremities confirming discriminatory ability. Conclusions: Our proposed Spanish version of the JOACMEQ retains the psychometric characteristics of the original JOACMEQ and could prove useful for the evaluation of patients with DCM in Spanish-speaking countries.