Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of a Marathi Version of the Versus Arthritis Musculoskeletal Health Questionnaire (MSK-HQ)

IntroductionMusculoskeletal (MSK) well-being plays a crucial role in determining one's quality of life. Musculoskeletal Health Questionnaire (MSK-HQ) score is a tool recently developed by the Versus Arthritis group of Oxford University in English to measure MSK health. Marathi is a regional language in western India spoken by more than 100 million people. There is a scarcity of valid and reliable tools to measure MSK health in this language. Hence, we decided to cross-culturally adapt and translate MSK-HQ to Marathi.MethodWe translated MSK-HQ score to Marathi (MSK-HQ-Ma) as per the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) guidelines. We tested its internal consistency, construct validity and reproducibility. It was compared with other health status scores EQ-5D-5L and overall health using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Test-retest reliability was tested in those subjects who were having stable MSK health after two weeks.ResultsWe recruited 158 consecutive subjects attending musculoskeletal clinics who had Marathi as their native language. Mean age was 44.8±17 years, females were 78 (49%). It showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.95). For construct validity we found a strong correlation between MSK-HQ-Ma and EQ-5D-5L values (Spearman’s r = 0.82, p