Validity and reliability of the Acute Cystitis Symptom Score (ACSS) in Persian

Abstract

Acute Cystitis Symptom Score (ACSS) is an 18-item self-reporting questionnaire for clinical diagnosis and follow-up of acute uncomplicated cystitis (AUC) in women. The ACSS, originally developed in Uzbek and Russian languages, is now available in several languages. The purpose of the study was to validate the ACSS questionnaire in the Persian language. Methods Sampling was random, so that people with AC who referred to Imam Reza Center or private practice were included in the study. Confidentiality of information, after obtaining informed consent, they proceeded to complete the questionnaires. In order to determine validity based on content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) about the content, clarity and simplicity of the questionnaire questions were used. In order to determine the reliability, the questionnaire was completed by all the people in the study at an interval of about 14 days, and the intraclass correlation index (ICC) and its confidence interval were calculated between the scores obtained from answering the instrument twice for each factor and the entire questionnaire. In order to determine internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used for each factor and the entire instrument. SPSS21 software was used for calculations. Results The results of this study showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the scores related to typical symptoms and quality of life in the two groups. In the case of distinguishing symptoms, this difference was not statistically significant. The overall score of the ACSS questionnaire scores was also statistically significant between the two groups. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.913 obtained for the questionnaire showed that the current questionnaire has the necessary reliability. Also, in our evaluation, CVI for most dimensions of the questionnaire was equal to one and most of the items were considered relevant. In terms of CVR, most of the criteria of the questionnaire scored high.