Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Aug 18, 2016; 7(8): 507-512
Published online Aug 18, 2016. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v7.i8.507
Validation of the functional rating index for the assessment of athletes with neck pain
Soofia Naghdi, Noureddin Nakhostin Ansari, Somaye ShamsSalehi, Ronald J Feise, Ebrahim Entezary
Soofia Naghdi, Noureddin Nakhostin Ansari, Somaye ShamsSalehi, Ebrahim Entezary, Department of Physiotherapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 11489, Iran
Ronald J Feise, Institute of Evidence-Based Chiropractic, Scottsdale, AZ 85251, United States
Author contributions: Naghdi S, Nakhostin Ansari N, and Feise RJ conceived and designed the study; ShamsSalehi S drafted the research protocol, which was edited and revised by Naghdi S, Nakhostin Ansari N, and Entezary E; ShamsSalehi S collected the data; Nakhostin Ansari N performed all the statistical analyses; Naghdi S, Nakhostin Ansari N and ShamsSalehi S drafted the manuscript, which was further edited and approved by all authors to be published; Nakhostin Ansari N was the chief investigator and guarantor.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the review board, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences.
Informed consent statement: All subjects gave their informed consent prior to the study enrolment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no competing interests to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Noureddin Nakhostin Ansari, Professor, Department of Physiotherapy, School of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical sciences, Enghelab Ave, Pitch-e-shemiran, Tehran 11489, Iran. nakhostin@sina.tums.ac.ir
Telephone: +98-21-77533939 Fax: +98-21-77727009
Received: February 16, 2016
Peer-review started: February 18, 2016
First decision: March 25, 2016
Revised: May 8, 2016
Accepted: June 1, 2016
Article in press: June 3, 2016
Published online: August 18, 2016
Abstract

AIM: To validate the culturally-adapted Persian Functional Rating Index (PFRI) for assessing neck pain (NP) in athletes.

METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 100 athletes with NP and 50 healthy athletes participated and responded to the PFRI. Fifty athletes with NP completed the PFRI for at least 7 d later to establish test-retest reliability.

RESULTS: The athletes with NP responded to all items, indicating excellent clinical utility. No floor and ceiling effects were found, indicating content validity and responsiveness. The PFRI revealed capability to discriminate between the athletes with NP and healthy athletes. The PFRI demonstrated strong correlation with the Numerical Rating Scale (Spearman’s rho = 0.94), and the Persian Neck Disability Index (Pearson r = 0.995), supporting criterion and construct validity. Internal consistency reliability was high (Cronbach’s α coefficient: 0.97). The test-retest reliability was excellent (ICCagreement = 0.96). The absolute reliability values of standard error of measurement and smallest detectable change were 3.2 and 8.84, respectively. An exploratory factor analysis yielded one factor explaining 78.03% of the total variance.

CONCLUSION: The PFRI is a valid and reliable measure of functional status in athletes with NP.

Keywords: Athletes, Neck pain, Functional rating index, Reliability, Validity

Core tip: Patient-reported outcomes are widely used to evaluate the functional effectiveness of treatments in clinical investigations. There has been a lack of patient-reported outcome measure for athletes with neck pain (NP). This study assessed the psychometric properties of the culturally-adapted Persian Functional Rating Index in a group of athletes with NP and demonstrated excellent validity and reliability.