The development and validation of a Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire - LKQ.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire on specific knowledge about low back pain entitled "The Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire".


BACKGROUND
There is a need for instruments to assess patient knowledge regarding chronic illness. Such methods can contribute to the education of patients.


METHODS
The Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire was developed through five focus groups. The questionnaire was distributed to 50 patients to assess their comprehension of the terms. To assess the reproducibility, 20 patients were surveyed by two different interviewers on the same day and twice by a single interviewer with a one-to-two week interval. For the construct validation, the Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire was given to 20 healthcare professionals with knowledge on low back pain and 20 patients to determine whether the questionnaire would discriminate between the two different populations. To assess the sensitivity of the questionnaire to changes in the knowledge level of the patients, it was given to 60 patients who were randomly assigned to the Intervention Group and the Control Group. The Intervention Group answered the questionnaire both before and after attending a chronic back pain educational program (back school), whereas the Control Group answered the questionnaire twice with an interval of one month and no educational intervention.


RESULTS
The focus groups generated a questionnaire with 16 items. The Spearman's correlation coefficient and the intra-class correlation coefficients ranged from 0.61 to 0.95 in the assessments of the intra-observer and inter-observer reproducibility (p< 0.01). In the construct validation, the healthcare professionals and patients showed statistically different scores (p< 0.001). In the phase regarding the sensitivity to change, the Intervention Group exhibited a significant increase in their specific knowledge over the Control Group (p< 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
The Low Back Pain Knowledge Questionnaire was validated and proved to be reproducible, valid and sensitive to changes in patient knowledge.
Maciel
Simone Carazzato
SC
Division of Rheumatology, Federal University of São Paulo - São Paulo Paulo/SP, Brazil.
Jennings
Fabio
F
Jones
Anamaria
A
Natour
Jamil
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002908:Chronic Disease; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D017116:Low Back Pain; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult