Background: Research suggests that clinician's attitudes and beliefs towards low back pain (LBP) management may affect their patients' treatment course and outcomes. Attitudes to Back pain Scale in musculoskeletal practitioners (ABS-mp) is a questionnaire developed to assess musculoskeletal clinicians' attitudes and beliefs regarding LBP.
Objective: This study aimed to translate, culturally adapt, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the ABS-mp questionnaire.
Design: Cross-sectional study with nested prospective sub-sample.
Methods: The translation was performed in several steps following the cross-cultural adaptation process. Test-retest and internal consistency reliability of the scales were evaluated along with convergent validity exploration between the ABS-mp and the Health Care Providers' Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale (HC-PAIRS). A convenience sample of 177 physical therapists were requested to participate in the study, out of which 132 have completed the survey, providing a 74% participation rate.
Results: The forward-backward translation process revealed minor discrepancies that were addressed by the expert panel. The test-retest reliability of the Hebrew ABS-mp was excellent (ICC = 0.906). Five items were found to be irrelevant for the Israeli physiotherapy health settings and were omitted. For internal consistency, the average inter-item correlation reached appropriate values for the Psychological, Biomedical, Re-activation, and Limitation on Sessions subscales (0.437, 0.265, 0.341, 0.197, respectively). For convergent validity, the ABS-mp's Biomedical subscale and the HC-PAIRS's total score were moderately correlated (0.535).
Conclusions: The Hebrew version of the ABS-mp has been validated and has demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability, good convergent validity and acceptable internal consistency.
Keywords: ABS-mp; Attitudes; Beliefs; HC‐PAIRS; Low back pain; Physiotherapy.
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