Banca de DEFESA: SILVANA NEVES DIAS FREIRE

Brazilian version of the Vulvar Pain Assessment Questionnaire (VPAQ) - Translation, cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric properties analyses

Pain; Reproducibility of Results; Translating; Validation Study; Vulvodynia.

Many women experience pain related to the female reproductive system at different stages of life, and the causes of this pain or discomfort can be varied and sometimes difficult to identify and therefore difficult to treat. The Vulvar Pain Assessment Questionnaire (VPAQ) was developed to assess the characteristics of self-reported vulvar pain in women and to determine which areas of their lives are most affected. To date, this instrument has not undergone any other process of cross-cultural adaptation and validity in another country. The VPAQ screen is a shorter, condensed version containing eight descriptive questions and thirty Likert-type questions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to translate and cross-culturally adapt the VPAQscreen questionnaire for the Brazilian population and to evaluate its measurement properties. Two independent translators translated the VPAQ screen into Brazilian Portuguese. The two translations were then merged into a single version, which was back translated into the original language, English, by two new independent translators. Next, a committee of experts was formed to evaluate all the versions already created and to draft the pre-final version of the questionnaire in Portuguese. Finally, the version was tested online on 30 women with vulvar pain. After these steps, the final version of the questionnaire was created, called VPAQ-BRasil. Subsequently, the measurement properties of the Brazilian version were evaluated by self-administering the questionnaire on two occasions, between 2 and 7 days apart. The following measurement properties were evaluated: structural validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability. The process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation produced very similar versions and was completed without too much difficulty. 39 volunteers completed the VPAQ-Brazil on both occasions, with a mean interval of 7 days. The Brazilian version showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.92), good test-retest reliability (Pearson's correlation (r) 0.50 to 0.84), satisfactory exploratory factor analysis with factor loadings above 0.4, and an adequate factor structure with five factors. The VPAQ-Brazil is an instrument compatible with the original version, valid and reliable for assessing the characteristics of self-reported vulvar pain in women and can be used in research and clinical practice.