RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF URDU VERSIONS OF VISUAL ANALOGUE SCALE FOR PAIN AND DISABILITY AMONG PATIENTS WITH NON-SPECIFIC NECK PAIN

Abstract

Purpose:  To linguistically translate the Visual Analogue Scale for pain and Visual Analogue Scale for disability into the Urdu language and to test its psychometric properties in patients with nonspecific neck pain among the Urdu-speaking population of Pakistan.

Materials and Methods: Translation of English version of VAS-P and VAS-D were carried out following international guidelines. The VAS was evaluated for reliability, content validity, and construct validity. Baseline assessments included self-structured questionnaire, VAS-P-U and VAS-D-U, NPDS-U, and NPQ-U.

Result: The Urdu versions of VAS-Pain and VAS-Disability exhibited excellent reliability, with ICC values of 0.99 and 0.98, respectively (95% CI). While no ceiling effect was found in either scale, a notable floor effect of 88.2% was observed for VAS-Disability. Both tools showed moderate to weak correlations with NPQ total scores (VAS-Pain: 0.64; VAS-Disability: 0.39) and NPDS total scores (VAS-Pain: 0.45; VAS-Disability: 0.36). Furthermore, significant score differences between patients and healthy individuals supported strong discriminant validity (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: VAS-P and VAS-D were successfully adapted into Urdu and demonstrated good reliability and validity, making it a suitable tool for assessing outcomes in individuals with non-specific neck pain and disability.