TURKISH VERSION QUALITY OF LIFE IN ESSENTIAL TREMOR QUESTIONNAIRE (QUEST): VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY STUDY

Background - Our aim was to translate the Quality of Life in Essential Tremor Questionnaire (QUEST) advanced by Troster (2005) and to analyse the validity and reliability of this questionnaire. Methods - Two hundred twelve consecutive patients with essential tremor (ET) and forty-three control subjects were included in the study. Permission for the translation and validation of the QUEST scale was obtained. The translation was performed according to the guidelines provided by the publisher. After the translation, the final version of the scale was administered to both groups to determine its reliability and validity. Results - The QUEST Physical, Psychosocial, communication, Hobbies/leisure and Work/finance scores were 0.967, 0.968, 0.933, 0.964 and 0.925, respectively. There were good correlations between each of the QUEST scores that were indicative of good internal consistency. Additionally, we observed that all of the QUEST scores were most strongly related to the right and left arms (p=0.0001). However, we observed that all of the QUEST scores were weakly related to the voice, head and right leg (p=0.0001). Discussion - These findings support the notion that the Turkish version of the Quality of Life in Essential Tremor (QUEST) questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool for the assessment of the quality of life of patients with ET.