Measuring disability of women with systemic sclerosis: validation of the italian version of the systemic sclerosis questionnaire

Background: the aim of this study was to validate the Italian version of Systemic Sclerosis Questionnaire (SySQ) and to evaluate its psychometric characteristics on a sample of inpatient and outpatient women with systemic sclerosis (SSc). metHodS: internal and external validity of the Italian version of SySQ were analyzed. internal validity included: 1) construct validity by means of factor analysis; 2) internal consistency for each category of SySQ through Cronbach's alpha; and 3) reproducibility over time with testretest using both Pearson's correlation and Intraclass Correlation Coeficient. External validity included: 1) concurrent validity, i.e. correlation with Skindex-17; and 2) discriminant validity, through comparison of scores for different groups of patients. reSUltS: We obtained data on 115 patients with SSc: 68 had the limited clinical form (lSSc) and 47 had the diffuse clinical form (dSSc). the structure of SySQ was conirmed by factor analysis. The questionnaire showed optimal internal consistency for all SySQ categories (Cronbach's alpha >0.84) and very good reproducibility over time (0.79-0.93, P

Disability evaluation, Quality of life, Scleroderma, Surveys and questionnaires, Systemic