Cross-cultural Adaptation, Validity, and Reliability of the Persian Utrecht Scale for Evaluation of Rehabilitation-Participation in Spinal Cord Injury Patients

Background: Despite participation is an important outcome of person’s rehabilitation process.there is no reliable and valid instrument for evaluation of participation in Persian-speaking spinal cord injuries (SCI). While SCI has serious damages on person’s social participation, assessment of participation demands culturally adapted and valid instruments. Objectives: This study took place to obtain a valid, reliable instrument for evaluation of Rehabilitation-Participation (P-USER-P) in an Iranian SCI. Methods: This study was methodological research, participating in 200 individuals. Analysis of face and content validity, discriminant validity, internal consistency, and reliability conducted after receiving permission and verification of the backwards translation from the main developer. Results: During the cultural adaptation process, several modifications proposed by experts’ panel were made to ensure adaptation of items’ descriptions with Iranian culture. The Cronbach’s α and ICC coefficients of the frequency, restriction and satisfaction subscales were 0.61, 0.71, 0.69, and 0.75, 0.84, 0.84, respectively. The instrument also showed good reliability and discriminant validity characteristics. Conclusions: P-USER-P is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring objective and subjective participation in SCI patients. It is also adapted with Iranian culture which qualifies its utility in the rehabilitation process of Persian-speaking SCI patients.