Visual analogue scale foot and ankle: validity and reliability of Thai version of the new outcome score in subjective form.

BACKGROUND

Nowadays, measuring score in the form of subjective questionnaires is the important tool for clinical evaluation of the foot and ankle-related problems. VisualAnalogue Scale-Foot and Ankle (VAS-FA) is the newly developed subjective questionnaire, which has sufficiency of validity and reliability from a previous study

OBJECTIVE

Translate the original English version of VAS-FA into the Thai version and evaluate the validity and reliability of Thai VAS-FA in patients with foot and ankle-related problems.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

According to the forward-backward translation protocol, original VAS-FA was translated into the Thai version. Thai VAS-FA and validated Thai Short Form-36 (SF-36) questionnaires were distributed to 42 Thai patients to complete. For validation, Thai VAS-FA scores were correlated with SF-36 scores. For reliability, the test-retest reliability and internal consistency were analyzed.

RESULTS

Thai VAS-FA score demonstrated the sufficient correlations with physical functioning (PF), role physical (RP), bodily pain (BP) domains, and total score of SF-36 (statistically significant with p < 0.001 level and r > 0.5 values). The result of reliability revealed highly intra-class correlation coefficient as 0.995 from test-retest study. The internal consistency was excellent with Cronbach alpha: 0.995.

CONCLUSION

The original VAS-FA score is a well-validated, subjective, visual-analogue-scale based outcome score. The Thai version of VAS-FA form maintained the validity and reliability of the original version. This newly translated-validated score can be distributed for the evaluation of the functions, symptoms, and limitation of activities in Thai patients with foot and ankle problems.