Measuring impairments of functioning and health in patients with axial spondyloarthritis by using the ASAS Health Index and the Environmental Item Set: translation and cross-cultural adaptation into 15 languages

INTRODUCTION: The Assessments of SpondyloArthritis international society Health Index (ASAS HI) measures functioning and health in patients with spondyloarthritis (SpA) across 17 aspects of health and 9 environmental factors (EF). The objective was to translate and adapt the original English version of the ASAS HI, including the EF Item Set, cross-culturally into 15 languages.

METHODS: Translation and cross-cultural adaptation has been carried out following the forward-backward procedure. In the cognitive debriefing, 10 patients/country across a broad spectrum of sociodemographic background, were included.

RESULTS: The ASAS HI and the EF Item Set were translated into Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Turkish. Some difficulties were experienced with translation of the contextual factors indicating that these concepts may be more culturally-dependent. A total of 215 patients with axial SpA across 23 countries (62.3% men, mean (SD) age 42.4 (13.9) years) participated in the field test. Cognitive debriefing showed that items of the ASAS HI and EF Item Set are clear, relevant and comprehensive. All versions were accepted with minor modifications with respect to item wording and response option. The wording of three items had to be adapted to improve clarity. As a result of cognitive debriefing, a new response option 'not applicable' was added to two items of the ASAS HI to improve appropriateness.

DISCUSSION: This study showed that the items of the ASAS HI including the EFs were readily adaptable throughout all countries, indicating that the concepts covered were comprehensive, clear and meaningful in different cultures.