Evaluation of a Hong Kong Chinese version of a self-administered questionnaire for assessing symptom severity and functional status of carpal tunnel syndrome: cross-cultural adaptation and reliability

Margaret WM Fok, HB Leung, WM Lee
Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong

OBJECTIVES. To evaluate the application of a translated version of an established self-administered questionnaire for carpal tunnel syndrome on Chinese patients in Hong Kong.

DESIGN. Evaluation of an instrument tool.

SETTING. Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong; Holistic Medical Centre, Aberdeen, Hong Kong.

PARTICIPANTS. Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome, translators.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES. The adaptation was based on forward-backward translation from English to Chinese (Hong Kong) and vice versa. Meetings with translators, investigators, and patients were organised to generate an acceptable version of the questionnaire. A pilot study was carried out on 20 patients and subsequently minor adjustments were added. Fifty patients were recruited to validate the reliability and internal consistency of the questionnaire.

RESULTS. The ordinality of response agreed with the original instrument. Test-retest reproducibility showed no significant difference between tests. The Pearson correlation coefficient ranged from 0.83 to 0.93. Internal consistency was good, at 0.85.

CONCLUSION. Through the validation of the Hong Kong Chinese version of the questionnaire, we are able to produce an assessment tool for the local patients. Furthermore, we are able to create a platform for: (i) a cross-national and cross-cultural epidemiological comparison as well as a means of (ii) evaluating different types of treatments.

Hong Kong Med J 2007;13:342-7

Key words: Carpal tunnel syndrome; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of results