Validation and reliability of the Turkish version of the inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease

Abstract

Background/Aims: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) impair patients' quality of life (QoL). The IBD Questionnaire (IBDQ) is created to measure the health related QoL specific for IBD. We planned to investigate the validation and reliability of the Turkish translation of IBDQ. Materials and Methods: Patients filled self-report questionnaires (Turkish IBDQ [TrIBDQ] and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey [SF36]) themselves under a physician's supervision, and they were free to ask questions about the questionnaires. The participants then filled the same questionnaires after at least two weeks. Construct validity, discriminant ability, reliability, and susceptibility to change were analyzed separately for the patients with IBD. Intra-class correlation coefficient was used to assess test-retest reliability. Cronbach's alpha values were used to assess internal consistency. Results: A 100 patients enrolled in the study, 53 with Crohn's disease (CD) and 47 with ulcerative colitis (UC). We found a moderate-to-high positive correlation between the TrIBDQ domains and the SF-36 dimensions. In UC and CD, TrIBDQ was able to differentiate active disease and remission. We found that Cronbach's alpha for TrIBDQ domains ranged from 0.76 to 0.94 in CD and 0.79 to 0.92 in UC. The total Cronbach's alpha for TrIBDQ was 0.96 in CD and 0.95 in UC. Sensitivity-to-change analyses of the bowel, systemic, and emotional scores showed statistically significant differences between their baseline and follow-up values. Conclusion: TrIBDQ is a valid and reliable tool for assessing the QoL in Turkish speaking patients who have IBD. Thus, it can be used in clinical research and practice.