Validation of Nepali NPRS for Musculoskeletal Pain

To be eligible to participate in the study, participants were required to be: (1) over 18 years, (2) a citizen of Nepal, (3) able to understand and speak Nepali fluently, (4) say numbers from 0 to 10 in order, and (5) currently experiencing musculoskeletal pain. Exclusion criteria included: any past surgeries related to the current pain; recent history of trauma; presence of red flags suggesting the presence of tumor and infection; and diagnosed psychiatric illnesses. A sample more than 100 is considered adequate in order to assess the psychometric properties of a patient-reported outcome measure [20 (link)], therefore, we recruited 104 individuals with musculoskeletal pain who consented to participate in the study and completed all the measures. Of these, 75 (72%) were recruited from the Physiotherapy Out-patient Department of Dhulikhel Hospital and 29 (28%) from the surrounding community. This gave a representative mix of rural and semi-urban participants. We recruited participants between October 2015 and April 2016.
The study was conducted in two phases: Phase 1 - the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of NPRS and GROC to Nepali, including the pre-testing of the translated Nepali versions; and Phase 2 – investigation of the psychometric properties of NPRS-NP.