Study design: Cross-sectional psychometric study.
Objective: To evaluate the reliability and validity of a spinal cord injury lifestyle scale (SCILS) and Health Behavior Questionnaire (HBQ) in the Persian language for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI).
Setting: Participants were selected among those referred to health centers and the Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Research Center.
Method: In accordance with standard procedure for translation, two questionnaires, the SCILS and HBQ, were translated using a forward and backward translation approach by professional translators. Face validity of the questionnaires was assessed by ten persons with SCI and content validity was agreed upon by 12 professors from health care teaching universities. To test the final versions of both questionnaires, 97 persons with SCI were included using a consecutive sampling method. Other questionnaires were used to assess concurrent validity (secondary impairment checklist, as well as SCILS and HBQ) and convergent validity (impact of event scale revised, brief symptom inventory, beck depression inventory, and functional independence measure).
Results: Internal consistency of SCILS and HBQ, assessed by Cronbach's alpha, was 0.75 for SCILS and 0.85 for HBQ. Test-retest reliability intraclass correlations were 0.86 and 0.92 for SCILS and HBQ, respectively. The number of current secondary impairments had a significant and negative correlation with SCILS (r = -0.22, P < 0.001), but it was not correlated with HBQ. SCILS had a significant and strong correlation with HBQ (r = 0.65, P < 0.001).
Conclusion: SCILS and HBQ can be used for measuring the health behavior of persons with SCI in Iran.