ADAPTATION AND VALIDATION OF DIZZINESS HANDICAP INVENTORY INTO ROMANIAN LANGUAGE
Abstract:
Introduction: vertigo and dizziness are frequent symptoms in current ear, nose and throat
(ENT) practice. Self-perception of health can be assessed by questionnaires like Dizziness Handicap
Inventory (DHI), a quality of life questionnaire widely used by specialists. Our aims were: the
translation, adaptation and validation of this questionnaire into Romanian language. Materials and
methods: the questionnaire was translated into Romanian and applied to a group of 50 patients
complaining of dizziness. The patients were requested to fill out the SF-36 questionnaire, too. Results:
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient showed a high value of internal consistency of 0.86. Corrected Item-
Total Correlation ranged from 0.24 to 0.74. A satisfactory degree of test-retest reliability value was
found for the total score. External validity was tested by Pearson correlation between total score and
subscales of DHI-Ro and SF-36 scores. Conclusions: The DHI-Ro is a disease-specific, health-related
quality-of-life questionnaire translated and linguistically adapted for Romanian-speaking patients
with an acceptable reliability and external validity.
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