Citation: Khaja AF, Al-Roudhan M, Hanna SS, Boshahri MO, Al-Awadh M, et al. (2020) Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Validation, and Reliability of the Michigan
Hand Outcomes Questionnaire: Arabic Version. J Surg Curr Trend Innov 4: 037.
• Page 2 of 6 •
J Surg Curr Trend Innov ISSN: 2578-7284, Open Access Journal
DOI: 10.24966/SCTI-7284/100037
Volume 4 • Issue 3 • 037
into several languages like Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, German, and
Thai [6,7]. The MHQ is yet to be translated to Arabic. And so, to learn
more about Arabic patients with hand injuries, it is the aim of this
study to translate the MHQ into Arabic and investigate its reliability
and validity.
Disabilities of the Arm Shoulder and Hand (DASH)
The DASH questionnaire is made up of 30 unique items, all
self-reported by patients and designed specically for measurement
of symptoms and physical functions in patients experiencing muscu-
loskeletal disorders of the upper limbs [8]. The objective of DASH
is to describe the disability that patients with upper limb disorders
experience and to observe symptom changes as well as changes in
functions over time following treatments [9]. DASH has proven to be
a reliable tool for use by physicians in the investigation of joints in the
upper extremities. Each item has a score ranging from 0 to 4. The total
score is calculated by adding the scores of all rated items (0–120).
Finally, the total DASH is reversed to match the majority of the MHS
subscales.
Materials and Methods
Translation
Translation was done as per recommendations of Guillemin’s
guidelines for validation and cross-cultural adaptation [10] after
permission obtained from the original MHQ copyright holder. Two
Bilingual orthopaedic surgeons were responsible for the conceptual
and literary translation of the original MHQ. Two other versions were
produced by independent translation companies with a background in
scientic English. All the versions produced were similar. Modica-
tions to incorporate from all the versions were made and implemented
in the nal version. A professional Arabic grammar checker reviewed
it. The back-translation came close to the original score. A pilot test
was then conducted on 10 random patients from the hand clinics, after
the Arabic version was approved by the translation committee. Both
the physicians interviewed the patients after completing the question-
naire to address any issues or need for assistance.
Participants
A total of 57 patients with hand disorders participated in this study.
The inclusion criteria were age 18 years or older, the ability to read
and write Arabic with ease, and at least 3-week duration of symptoms.
Patients who were not able to ll out the forms, with major neurologic
disorders or with elbow or shoulder problems were excluded from the
study.
Psychometric Properties and Data Analysis
Internal consistency
The outcome measures of each construct were presented using de-
scriptive analysis. Mean and Standard Deviation (SD) were calculat-
ed. Internal consistency was evaluated by calculating the Cronbach’s
α.Internal consistency determines to what extent different items with-
in one questionnaire measure the same construct of interest [11]. Ac-
cording to the literature, α>0.70 is regarded as acceptable, while it
should not be higher than 0.95, to avoid redundancy [12].
Construct validity
Construct validity reects whether the questionnaire measures
what it was designed to measure. In the case of hand problems, ques-
tions measure the typical complaints following Hand injuries [11].
To test the construct of the Arabic MHS, its relationship to a gold
standard questionnaire like DASH, this had a validated Arabic ver-
sion, needed to be examined. For this purpose, Spearman’s correla-
tion coefcient between Arabic MHS and DASH was calculated. A
higher correlation coefcient would prove the construct validity of
the Arabic MHSQ. Furthermore, the accuracy of the measurement is
determined by calculating the oor and ceiling effects. The oor ef-
fect is the percentage of patients who scored the lowest possible score
(score of 0), and the ceiling effect is the percentage of those with the
highest score (score of 48). If more than 15% of the respondents had
a oor or ceiling effect, the effects would be considered to be relevant
[13].
The calculations were performed using Micorosft Excel 2019,
IBM SPSS v.26, and Graphpad Prism v.8.
Results
57 patients participated in this study and completed the MHS and
DASH questionnaires and agreed to have their data analysed for re-
search purposes. 31 patients (54.4%) were male, while 26 were fe-
males (45.6%). The average age of the participants was 50.65 years,
with a standard deviation of 16.05 years, which means that the major-
ity of the sample was between 35 and 67 years of age. As shown in
table 1, Mean, standard deviations, minimum, maximum, and oor/
ceiling effects were calculated. All subscales of MHSQ seem to have
no more than 2% oor/ceiling effect, which indicates that there is no
problem with the accuracy of the measurement.
Internal consistency
To estimate the reliability of the questionnaire, Internal consisten-
cy was calculated by using overall Cronbach’s alpha which was equal
to 0.859, indicating an overall high degree of internal consistency, the
Cronbach’s alpha of all the subscales were also proved to be higher
than 0.7, which indicate an acceptable to very good reliability (Table
2).
Construct validity
The correlation of different subscales with each other was exam-
ined by calculating the Interclass correlation coefcient. The results,
which are shown in table 3, indicate that there is a relatively high
and signicant association between the subscales. The relationship
of Pain with Hand function (r=-0.814; p<0.05), Work (r=-0.886; p
<0.05) was especially high (reverse association, which means, that
higher pain is associated with worse daily life activity and disrupted
daily work).
For the validity assessment of the Arabic MHOQ, Arabic DASH
is used as the standard instrument that is acceptable in almost all
countries. Table 4 presents the spearman’s correlation coefcients to
measure the level of association between DASH and Arabic MHSQ,
and its construct validity, respectively. As shown in Table 2, Arabic
DASH shows a statistically signicant correlation with all subscales
of Arabic MHSQ. However, it indicates especially high correlation
with Hand function (r=0.701; p<0.001), activity of daily life (r=0.761;
p<0.001) and Pain score (r=-0.620; p<0.001).