Validation of the Reflux Disease Questionnaire for a Turkish Population

Abstract

Background and Aims: Achieving the correct diagnosis and therapeutic success in gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) depends on the patient‘s self-assessment. Therefore, valid and reliable patient-reported questionnaires are very important. When designing such measurement tools, researchers should focus on their validity, reliability, sensitivity, and, applicability. The reflux disease questionnaire (RDQ) largely meets these important requirements. This study aims to examine The RDQ’s psychometric characteristics for the Turkish society (RDQ TR ) and its validity in symptoms’ evaluation.
 Methods: The sample of this study comprised 81 patients who were admitted to our institution, GERD study group outpatient clinic. The data collection forms used in the study were the case report forms and RDQ. Three weeks after the first interview, 30 patients were re-interviewed by the phone and the RDQ was re-administered. For the validity studies of the scale, language validity, content validity, and construct validity studies were used, and for the reliability studies, internal consistency and test-retest reliability methods were used.
 Results: The content validity index of form was 0.95 (0.93-0.98). The performed factor analysis indicated 3 factors with an eigenvalue over 1.0. Those factors were responsible for 77.66% of the variance. The Cronbach‘s alpha values were 0.88 for regurgitation sub-dimension, 0.91 for dyspepsia sub-dimension, 0.86 for heartburn sub-dimension, and 0.92 overall. Intraclass correlation coefficient value of the scale was 0.94.
 Conclusions: Our study highlights that the RDQ TR is reliable, valid, and responsive to change in Turkey patients with GERD symptomatology.

Quality of life and severity of symptoms among patients with various degrees of reflux esophagitis: a prospective study

“…We showed good validity and reliability of the Arabic and Hebrew versions of the RDQ and QoL questionnaire and the translated versions can be implemented in clinical practice in Israeli and Arab populations. Our results are in agreement with previous studies in which the RDQ was translated to several languages with good validity and reliability, such as Italian 23 , Spanish 24 , Chinese 25 and Turkish 26 . We have shown acceptable validity and reliability of the Arabic and Hebrew versions of the QoL questionnaire.…”

“…We expected a stronger association between symptoms severity and esophagitis grade. Nonetheless, a possible explanation for this observation is the fact that esophagitis grade C/D is diagnostic for true GERD according to the Lyon consensus, whereas esophagitis grade A/B is a less specific endoscopic finding and is not diagnostic for true GERD 26 . Furthermore, large overlap between esophagitis A/B and functional esophageal conditions have been observed, meaning that the EE-A/B patients could have a substantial functional or hypersensitive component producing a comparable symptoms severity to the more severe GERD patients 28 .…”

Meta-analysis on the epidemiology of gastroesophageal reflux disease in China

“…This study applied the RDQ, GerdQ and other survey tools. Previous studies have shown that these questionnaires exhibit good psychometric characteristics and are suitable for application in primary health care[ 11 - 13 ]. The GerdQ and RDQ were considered to have the same screening effect[ 12 ].…”

“…As a chronic disease with a high prevalence rate, GERD has brought substantial economic and health burdens to patients and society[ 8 , 9 ] and may lead to tumours[ 10 ]. In addition to laboratory methods[ 11 ], several standard scales are used to evaluate GERD, including the gastroesophageal reflux disease questionnaire (GerdQ)[ 12 ] and the reflux disease questionnaire (RDQ)[ 13 ] .…”