Background: Headache is the common neurologic symptom that affects half the world's population. the prevalence declines with age, headache remains a common neurologic complaint among elderly populations. Purpose this study was conducted to translate and test face validity, content validity, feasibility, internal consistency reliability and test retest reliability of adapted Arabic-language version of Headache Impact Test questionnaire in patients with headache.
Methods Three expert panels and 90 patients with headaches aged from 18 to 65 years old participated in this study. Forward translation, development of preliminary initially translated version, backward translation, and development of the pre-final version and testing of pre-final version using experts. One panel tested the clarity and the other tested the proportion of relevance. Testing of the pre-final version on the last expert panel. Then, testing of the final version on patients. Clarity index, the expert proportion of relevance, descriptive statistics, missed item index, Cronbach's coefficient alpha, and Intra-rater class correlation coefficient were conducted for statistical analysis.
Results: The study showed that the Arabic version of the Headache Impact Test questionnaire has excellent face validity as the scale index of clarity equals 93.33%, it has excellent content validity of 98.33%, regarding the scale feasibility; all items were filled in 100% of sheets. Cronbach's alpha equaled 0.865, Intra-class correlation coefficient between test and retest was 0.990.
Conclusions: Arabic version of the Headache Impact Test questionnaire has the face and content validity, feasibility, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability enough to measure the severity of headache in Arabic-speaking headache patients.