The Brazilian version of the Bournemouth questionnaire for low back pain: translation and cultural adaptation

BACKGROUND: The Bournemouth questionnaire is a multidimensional instrument for evaluating health domains among patients with low back pain. OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to translate and cross-culturally adapt the Bournemouth questionnaire for individuals with low back pain, to Brazilian Portuguese. DESIGN AND SETTINGS:This was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Federal University of Sao Carlos. METHODS: The Brazilian version of the Bournemouth questionnaire was developed following the processes of translation, back-translation, committee review and pre-testing. The translation phase involved two independent bilingual translators whose mother language was Brazilian Portuguese. The back-translation phase involved two independent translators whose mother language was English. In order to verify comprehension of the questionnaire, 44 individuals (43.1% men) with low back pain, and with mean age of 45.4 +/- 13.8 years, participated in the pre-testing phase. RESULTS: During the translation phase, some terms and expressions were changed to obtain cultural equivalence to the original Bournemouth questionnaire. In the pre-testing phase, each item of the questionnaire showed a comprehension level of over 90%. CONCLUSION: The Bournemouth questionnaire was translated and culturally adapted to the Portuguese language, to be used among individuals with low back pain.