Simplified Chinese Version of the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Back Pain Evaluation Questionnaire: Agreement, Responsiveness, and Minimal Important Change for Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain.

Study Design: Psychometric test of the cross-cultural adaptation the Japanese Orthopaedic Association Back Pain Evaluation Questionnaire (JOABPEQ) in low back pain (LBP) patients.

Objective: To investigate the agreement, responsiveness, and minimal important change (MIC) of the simplified Chinese version of the JOABPEQ in LBP patients.

Summary Of Background Data: The factor structure, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, validity, floor and ceiling effect of simplified Chinese JOABPEQ have been tested, while the agreement, responsiveness, and MIC were required.

Methods: The agreement, responsiveness, and MIC of the simplified Chinese version were assessed by completing the Chinese JOABPEQ twice. Agreement was tested with Bland-Altman plot. Responsiveness was operationalized using receiver operating characteristic analyses. The anchor-based method was used to calculate MIC.

Results: One hundred sixty-two of 184 patients returned to finish the booklet twice were available for analysis (response rate: 88.0%). While the responsiveness, the area under the curves of each subscale were ranged from 0.746 to 0.875, which meant a good responsiveness. While the MIC (MIC%) of simplified Chinese JOABPEQ was 19.28 (44.98%) for Q1 Low back pain, 15.20 (24.13%) for Q2 Lumbar function, 15.79 (22.76%) for Q3 Walking ability, 9.58 (19.86%) for Q4 Social life function, 7.33 (17.28%) for Q5 Mental health. While compared with the MIC, only the Q3 Walking ability had a positive rating for agreement in the Bland-Altman plot.

Conclusion: The simplified Chinese JOABPEQ has positive agreement of Q3 Walk ability and acceptable to excellent responsiveness of all the subscales. The MICs for subscales of the simplified Chinese JOABPEQ ranged from 7.33 to 19.28 points.

Level Of Evidence: 3.