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For healthcare professionals, early assessment of the patient's illness representation may reduce or avoid later difficulties such as non adherence to treatment. The Implicit Models of Illness Questionnaire (IMIQ) is a four dimension tool which assesses illness representation. However, a French version has not been published yet. The purpose of this study was first to translate and second to evaluate internal consistency of the translated version.
Methods
A double back-translation process was selected to produce a French version of the IMIQ, followed by a pretest performed in two phases (n=9). The pretest was done according to a widely known method for trans-cultural adaptation of questionnaires, which adds a 7-point scale following each item in order to assess item clarity. Low rating (4 on 7 or less) may indicate the presence of ambiguity for a given item. For the internal consistency, a cross-sectional study was conducted in work rehabilitation centers among 21 women and 20 men in the chronic pain phase (absent from work between 3 months and a year due to MSDs). The French version of the IMIQ and a sociodemographic questionnaire were administered.
Results
The pretest revealed a few ambiguities, which were resolved by the second phase according to the average clarity rates, superior to 4 for each item. Calculations of Cronbach’s alphas revealed good internal consistency for each dimension: Consequences (0.64), Responsibility (0.74), Curability (0.62) and Variability (0.64). Comparable coefficients were found in literature (0.61 to 0.85) for the original version among a population with chronic illnesses. Characteristics of participants are representative of the target population.
Discussion
Results support the internal consistency of the translated questionnaire. The French version of the IMIQ appears to be equivalent to the original version, thus supporting its use in clinic and in research to assess illness representations.