title: Translation of the Medical Fear Survey to Serbian: psychometric properties.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Medical Fear Survey (MFS) is an instrument designed for measuring fear of medical and related treatments.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Aim of the present study was MFS translation into Serbian, measurement of its psychometric properties and MFS validation using other Blood-injury-injections and related stimuli instruments that have been translated from English into Serbian.
  
  
  METHODS
  After obtaining permission from the author of the original MFS, double forward translation from English to Serbian and backward translation to English were conducted in ten steps, according to International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) guidelines. Reliability, factorial analysis and concurrent validation of Serbian version of MFS were conducted on a sample of 485 medical or pharmacy students at University of Kragujevac, Serbia.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Serbian version of MFS showed high internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha 0.968 and good temporal stability after testing-and-retesting (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.838, and intraclass correlation coefficient 0.877). Factorial analysis confirmed the same five factors demonstrated in the original English version: fear of mutilated bodies (10 items), fear of blood (11 items), fear of injections and blood draws (9 items), fear of sharp objects (10 items), and fear of medical examinations and physical symptoms (10 items). The total score of MFS correlated significantly with the total scores of Injection Phobia Scale-Anxiety (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.391, p <0.001), Blood/Injection Fear Scale (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.502, p <0.001) and Medical Avoidance Survey (Spearman's correlation coefficient 0.396, p <0.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Serbian version of the 50-item MFS showed similar psychometric properties as the original English version of this scale, with the same factorial structure. It could be used for measurement of fear of medical and related treatments in Serbian socio-cultural milieu, preferably self-administered. Hippokratia 2016, 20(1): 44-49.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Djokovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Milovanovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Milovanovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Milovanovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Stojic
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mrvic
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kostic
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stefanovic
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Serbia.
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Jankovic
keywords: Medical Fear Survey; Serbian; transcultural validation; translation