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K.S. Takara1, L.A.P. de Viveiro1, P.A. Moura1, I.M.B. de Souza1, A.P. Marques1, J.E. Pompeu1
1University of Sao Paulo, Department of Physical Therapy, Speech, and Occupational Therapy, São Paulo, Brazil
Background: Low back pain (LBP) is recognised to be the leading cause of years lived with disability. The major incidence of LBP occurs in the elderly population who are susceptible to suffer from functional incapacity, risk of fall and to develop frailty . The Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ) is the most extensive instrument used to assess disability in people with LBP. Although there is some good evidence on psychometric properties of the RMDQ in young adults, there is no evidence of construct validity of the RMDQ in the elderly population.
Purpose: To verify the construct validity of RMDQ in community-dwelling elderly.
Methods: This is a psychometric study, in which we assessed community-dwelling elderly of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, aged 60 years or more, both sex, with chornic LBP (more than 3 months). The evidence of construct validity was observed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The McDonald’s Omega and the Generalized H (G-H) index were used to test the reliability and replicability, respectively. A statistical significance level of 0.05 was adopted for all tests.
Results: We assessed 528 elderlies with LBP, 80,9% (n=427) female and 19,1% (n=101) male, mean age of 73 (6,77) years old. The findings suggest that the RMDQ is a seventeen-items bi-dimensional instrument, with two dimensions, “functional capacity” and “mobility”. The re-specification showed good reliability (0.87) and reproducibility (GH latent-observed) of 0.82-0.66 and 0.89-0.80 for “functional capacity” and “mobility” factors, respectively. The goodness of fit indices were obtained after seven re-specification of analysis, indicating the adequacy of the scale for assessing disability in community-dwelling elderly.
Conclusion(s): The RMDQ is a bi-dimensional instrument with two domains that involves functional capacity and mobility when applied to community-dwelling elderly.
Implications: This study showed that caution should be taken when using RMDQ to assess disability in elderly people. It highlights the importance of proper validation of instruments to ensure that the construct is well represented. Future studies are needed to verify which instrument is more suitable to evaluate disability in the eldely population.
Funding, acknowledgements: This study was not financed.
Keywords: Low Back Pain., Aged., Validation Study.
Topic: Older people
Did this work require ethics approval? Yes
Institution: University of Sao Paulo (USP)
Committee: The Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP)
Ethics number: CAAE 22479419.9.0000.0065
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
