Cross-cultural Adaptation and Validity of the Patient Rated Michigan Hand Outcome Questionnaire in Bahasa Melayu for Malaysian Patients.

Background

The Michigan Hand Outcomes Questionnaire (MHQ) was designed in 1998 by Chung and colleagues at the University of Michigan in 1998. It is a hand-specific patient-rated outcome (PRO) instrument used to measure patients' outcome with conditions of, or injury to, the hand and/or wrist. This study is aimed at translating and cross-culturally adapting the MHQ into Bahasa Melayu (BM), examining the validity and reliability of the MHQ-BM version for our local population to be used as a patient-rated outcome measurement in Malaysian patients with hand injuries.

Methods

This study was performed in two phases. Phase 1 involved the translation of the MHQ into BM using Beaton Protocol. In Phase 2, we administered the final version of the MHQ-BM in patients with hand and/or wrist injuries to test its stability (n = 50) and validity (n = 185).

Results

The MHQ-BM showed good content and face validity. Cronbach α totalled 0.821 for the MHQ-BM. The Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) of the test-retest reliability for the six domains ranged from 0.960 to 0.984 with excellent correlation (ICC = 0.984) for the total score. The BM version of MHQ-BM showed excellent test-retest reliability.

Conclusions

The MHQ-BM is well-translated and culturally well-adapted to maintain the reliability and content validity of the instrument (MHQ) at a conceptual level across Malaysia. We found the application and evaluation of the instrument to be feasible and understandable among patients with hand and/or wrist injuries in Malaysia.