Psychometric evaluation of the Chinese version of musculoskeletal self-management questionnaire (MSK-SMQ) in older-adult chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) patients

To translate the Musculoskeletal Self-Management Questionnaire (MSK-SMQ) into Chinese and evaluate its reliability and validity among older-adult patients with chronic musculoskeletal disorders. A total of 424 older adult patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain were recruited via convenience sampling from the Department of Orthopedics of Grade-A tertiary hospitals in Liaoning and Shanxi Provinces.With authorization from the original scale developers, the MSK-SMQ was translated into Chinese in accordance with the Brislin translation model. Item analysis was performed to assess item discrimination. Delphi method was adopted to calculate content validity. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted to explore and verify the latent factor structure of the scale. Internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability were calculated to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire. A total of 24 items were retained after item analysis. The scale-level content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.964. Exploratory factor analysis extracted one common factor, which accounted for 78.896% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis results revealed that χ2/df = 2.580, NFI = 0.905, TLI = 0.934, CFI = 0.939, IFI = 0.940, and RMR = 0.026. The Cronbach’s α coefficient, split-half reliability and test-retest reliability of the Chinese version of MSK-SMQ were 0.987, 0.988 and 0.865, respectively. The Chinese version of MSK-SMQ possesses satisfactory psychometric properties, which can be applied to assess self-management skills in patients with persistent musculoskeletal conditions.