Introduction: The Newcastle Stroke-Specific Quality of Life Measure (NEWSQOL) is one of the few specific questionnaires for evaluating the quality of life among patients who have suffered an ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke.
Aims: To translate and adapt this questionnaire into Spanish and to evaluate its reliability and acceptability.
Patients and methods: The original version of the NEWSQOL questionnaire was translated into Spanish. The translation was agreed upon by a team of experts, and was then back-translated into English and sent to the author, who gave her approval of the rendering. This version was later administered to a group of patients in order to evaluate its reliability, acceptability, floor effect and ceiling effect.
Results: The process of linguistic adaptation allowed semantic, conceptual and content equivalence to be achieved in the Spanish version of the NEWSQOL. The results obtained in the preliminary analysis show excellent acceptability, an internal consistency index of 0.9 for the whole questionnaire and a good or excellent test-retest agreement for all the domains. No ceiling effect was detected, but a floor effect was observed in the case of the vision and cognition domains.
Conclusion: The Spanish version of the NEWSQOL questionnaire is reliable for evaluating the quality of life in post-stroke patients, as well as being well accepted. The questionnaire must be used in more broader samples in order to evaluate its validity and sensitivity.
Title: Traduccion al castellano y analisis preliminar de las propiedades psicometricas del cuestionario Newcastle Stroke-Specific Quality of Life Measure (NEWSQOL) para valorar la calidad de vida en pacientes postictus.
Introduccion. El Newcastle Stroke-Specific Quality of Life Measure (NEWSQOL) es uno de los pocos cuestionarios especificos para valorar la calidad de vida en pacientes que han sufrido ictus isquemico u hemorragico. Objetivo. Traducir y adaptar dicho cuestionario al castellano y evaluar su fiabilidad y aceptabilidad. Pacientes y metodos. Se tradujo al castellano la version original del cuestionario NEWSQOL, traduccion que fue consensuada por un equipo de expertos, y a partir de la cual se hizo una retrotraduccion al ingles que se envio a la autora, quien mostro su conformidad. Posteriormente esa version se administro a un grupo de pacientes para valorar su fiabilidad, aceptabilidad, efecto suelo y efecto techo. Resultados. El proceso de adaptacion linguistica permitio obtener la equivalencia semantica, conceptual y de contenido de la version española de NEWSQOL. Los resultados obtenidos en el analisis preliminar reflejan una excelente aceptabilidad, un indice de consistencia interna de 0,9 para la totalidad del cuestionario y una concordancia test-retest buena o excelente para todos los dominios. No se detecto efecto techo, pero si efecto suelo para los dominios de vision y cognicion. Conclusion. La version española del cuestionario NEWSQOL es fiable para valorar la calidad de vida en pacientes postictus, ademas de aceptarse bien. Es necesario utilizar el cuestionario en muestras mas amplias para evaluar su validez y sensibilidad.