The cross-cultural adaptation and reliability of the online Hebrew version of the extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire

Background: The Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire assesses musculoskeletal (NMQ) symptoms in occupational environments. Physiotherapists are known to work with their bodies, and hence prone to occupational musculoskeletal injuries. To date, there is no Hebrew version of the extended version of the NMQ (NMQ-E). Purpose: To cross-culturally adapt the NMQ-E into Hebrew and evaluate the intra-rater reliability of the online Hebrew version (HNMQ-E) in a population of physiotherapists. Methods: After cross-cultural adaptation, test-retest reliability over a week was assessed with 65 participants who had no change in their health status over the past week. Statistical analysis included the calculation of Cohen's kappa coefficient (kappa), observed proportions of agreement, and intraclass correlations. Results: Intra-rater reliability for the prevalence of pain was moderate to substantial (kappa = 0.51-0.80), and highly variable agreement for questions about pain consequences (kappa = 0.20-0.94). Observed proportions of agreement were higher than 0.78 for all the items. The mean completion time of the survey was 6:30 3:37. Conclusions: The online version of the HNMQ-E has been found to be reliable and practical. Future studies on the properties of the HNMQ-E should investigate more general working populations.