Development of Kannada version, cross cultural adaptation, reliability and validity of Keele start back screening tool.

BACKGROUND

Back pain poses a significant global health challenge, underscoring the necessity for accurate assessment and management tools. The primary purpose of The Keele Start Back Screening Tool is to guide personalized treatment decisions by identifying subgroups of patients based on their risk of developing persistent pain and disability". Objective of this study: This research aims to translate the original KSBST version into Kannada and assess the scale's reliability and validity among Kannada speaking individuals.

METHODS

A methodological framework was applied to translate and culturally adapt the screening tool, involving forward and backward translation, committee review, and pre-testing. A total of 80 participants were recruited to assess demographic characteristics, validity and reliability of the Kannada-translated scale using measures such as internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and validity.

RESULTS

In the test-retest reliability analysis, moderate to good reliability was observed for both total score and sub-score assessments, with Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) values of 0.743 and 0.517, respectively and Cronbach's alpha values of 0.852 and 0.682 respectively. In the concurrent validity analysis, the Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (ρ) between the KSBST-K and the original English version (KSBST-E) showed strong positive relationships for both total score and sub-score assessments, with values of 0.895 and 0.891, respectively. This indicates that the KSBST-K effectively captures similar constructs as the original, supporting its validity for Kannada-speaking populations.

CONCLUSION

The KSBST was effectively translated and adapted into Kannada language, shown good reliability in total score with ICC 0.743 and moderate test retest reliability with ICC 0.517 in sub scores. Translated KSBST-K version has proven have strong concurrent validity with r = 0.895 in total and r = 0.891 sub scores.