Translation, cultural adaption and content validity evaluation of the Occupational Balance Questionnaire into German-a cross-sectional study in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

BACKGROUND

Extending the concept of work-life balance and recognising that many people's lives cannot easily be divided into work and non-work life, Occupational Balance enables the exploration of a person's satisfaction with the balance and variance of occupations in daily life at most contemporary levels.

OBJECTIVE

To effectively measure Occupational Balance in the German-speaking population, this study developed a German version of the Occupational Balance Questionnaire (OBQ11-G) by conducting a cross-sectional study involving translation, cultural adaptation and content validity evaluation.

METHODS

A preliminary German version of the OBQ11 was developed based on Beaton's guideline and then finalised after an online focus group (n = 7 occupational therapists; 5 women [71%]) to reach consensus on the relevance, comprehensibility and overall comprehensiveness of the items. We applied the framework method to analyse the focus group's qualitative data and descriptive statistics to report the quantitative data.

RESULTS

Overall, the experts rated all questionnaire items as "relevant" to "very relevant", but eight of the eleven items were slightly adapted to improve comprehensibility, due to inconsistencies in terminology. Experts did not agree on whether the questionnaire fully covered the concept of Occupational Balance, with 57% of respondents agreeing and 43% disagreeing, suggesting that additional assessments should be applied when measuring Occupational Balance.

CONCLUSION

The German version of the OBQ11 has now been thoroughly translated, and further studies on its psychometric properties are needed to enhance its validity.