Russian localization and validation of the BRACE QUESTIONNAIRE

BACKGROUND: According to the literature, the Greek questionnaire on the study of the quality of life of children and adolescents undergoing brace treatment (BRACE questionnaire, abbreviated as BrQ) is informative and reliable, which is confirmed by its validation in different countries. This necessitates the creation of an adopted Russian version and its validation.

AIM: To perform Russian localization and validation of the Greek questionnaire on the study of the quality of life of children and adolescents undergoing brace treatment.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Russian localization and validation of the Russian version of the questionnaire on braces (Ru-BrQ) was carried out in several stages: direct and reverse translations, examination of the questionnaire, formation of a preliminary version, pilot testing of 104 patients with idiopathic scoliosis on brace treatment, development of the final version, reliability study using the evaluation of Cronbach’s alpha criterion and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and provision of the final version.

RESULTS: According to the indicators of the overall Ru-BrQ score, 0% of patients scored at the “floor” and “ceiling” levels. The average quality of life scores according to Ru-BrQ and in the retest were 72 ± 9.2 and 72.4 ± 9.0 points, respectively. According to the ICC indicator, domains such as “general health,” “self-esteem and aesthetics,” “vitality,” and “social functioning” showed excellent reliability (>0.9). “Physical functioning” and “school activity” demonstrated good reliability (0.75–0.9). “Emotional functioning” and “body pain” demonstrated moderate reliability (0.5–0.75). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showed that except for the domains “emotional functioning” and “body pain,” where good internal consistency was determined (≥0.8), all other domains confirmed excellent internal consistency (≥0.9). The Pearson correlation coefficient (index 0.67) revealed a noticeable correlation between Ru-BrQ and the Russian version of SRS-22.

CONCLUSIONS: The Russian version is a reliable questionnaire for the study of the quality of life of children and adolescents undergoing brace treatment, comparable with the original Greek version of BrQ, and can be recommended for use in practical and scientific activities to assess the effect of a torso brace on the quality of life in children and adolescents.