Transcultural adaption and psychometric properties of the STarT Back Screening Tool among Finnish low back pain patients.

PURPOSE

The STarT Back Screening Tool (SBST) is a 9-item questionnaire designed for screening low back pain (LBP) patients into three prognostic groups for stratified care. The stratified care approach has proven to be clinically more beneficial and cost-effective than the current best physiotherapy practice. The objective of this study was to translate, culturally adapt and study psychometric properties of the SBST among Finnish LBP patients.

METHODS

The SBST was translated into Finnish using appropriate translation guidelines. A total of 116 patients were recruited from outpatient clinics. They were asked to fill out two questionnaires within 1-7 days. The first questionnaire set included the SBST, Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Örebro Musculoskeletal Pain Screening Questionnaire (ÖMPSQ) and intensities of back and leg pain (10-cm Visual Analogue Scale). The second questionnaire form included the SBST and a question about persistence of symptoms.

RESULTS

Some linguistic and cultural differences emerged during the translation process with item 1 ("spread down my legs"), item 2 ("neck and shoulder pain"), item 6 ("worrying thoughts") and item 9 ("bothersome"). The test-retest reliability of the SBST total score was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.78) and of the psychosocial subscale good (0.68). Cronbach's alpha for the psychosocial subscale was 0.55. Spearman's correlation coefficient between SBST total score and BDI was 0.38, ODI 0.39, ÖMPSQ 0.45, intensity of leg pain 0.45 and LBP 0.31. Based on analysis of variance, the SBST discriminated low- and medium-risk groups better than medium- and high-risk groups.

CONCLUSIONS

The Finnish translation of the SBST is linguistically accurate and has been adapted to the Finnish-speaking population. It showed to be a valid and reliable instrument and comparable with the original English version. Therefore, it may be used in clinical work with Finnish LBP patients.