The Swedish version of the pain self-efficacy questionnaire short form, PSEQ-2SV: Cultural adaptation and psychometric evaluation in a population of patients with musculoskeletal disorders.

Objectives: Measuring pain self-efficacy is suggested as relevant in patients with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in a primary care setting. However, there is no pain self-efficacy questionnaire (PSEQ) available in Swedish. The aim of this study was to translate and culturally adapt PSEQ-2 to Swedish and evaluate reliability and validity in a population of patients with MSDs.

Methods: A translation and cultural adaptation together with psychometric evaluation of reliability and validity were performed according to guidelines with three groups of participants with MSDs. First, a convenient sample of 25 individuals were interviewed in the translation process. Next, 61 participants completed the test-retest survey via social media or QR codes in waiting rooms in rehabilitation clinics. Finally, to evaluate construct validity questionnaires were obtained from 132 participants with MSDs in an ongoing randomized controlled trial.

Results: The Swedish version of PSEQ-2 showed adequate face and content validity. The results of 0.805 on Cohen's weighted kappa indicate that the reliability of PSEQ-2SV in a group of adults with MSDs is on the border between substantial and almost perfect. The point estimate regarding relative rank variance, measuring the individual variation within the group, and relative concentration, the systematic change in how the assessments are concentrated on the scale's categories, shows minor systematic differences and some random differences not neglectable. The construct validity of pre-defined hypotheses was met to some degree.

Conclusion: The PSEQ-2SV has been accurately linguistically translated and tested for reliability and validity, in a population of MSDs, and is deemed to be able to be used in the clinic and in research. As there were some concerns regarding measurement error and systematic bias, more research could be of value.