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. 2017 Jun;24(3):457-472.
doi: 10.1007/s12529-016-9608-1.

Psychometric Properties of an Arabic Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20 (PASS-20) in Healthy Volunteers and Patients Attending a Physiotherapy Clinic

Osama A Tashani  1   2 , Oras A AlAbas  3   4 , Raafat A M Kabil  4   5 , Mark I Johnson  3   6
Affiliations

Psychometric Properties of an Arabic Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20 (PASS-20) in Healthy Volunteers and Patients Attending a Physiotherapy Clinic

Osama A Tashani et al. Int J Behav Med. 2017 Jun.

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to cross-culturally adapt the PASS-20 questionnaire for use in Libya.

Methods: Participants were 71 patients (42 women) attending the physiotherapy clinic, Ibn Sina Hospital, Sirt, Libya for management of persistent pain and 137 healthy unpaid undergraduate students (52 women) from the University of Sirt, Libya. The English PASS-20 was translated into Arabic. Patients completed the Arabic PASS-20 and the Arabic Pain Rating Scales on two occasions separated by a 14-day interval. Healthy participants completed the Arabic PASS-20 on one occasion.

Results: The internal consistency (ICC) for pain patient and healthy participant samples yielded a good reliability for the total score, cognitive anxiety, fear of pain, and physiological anxiety. The test-retest reliability of the Arabic PASS-20 score showed high reliability for the total score (ICC = 0.93, p < 0.001), escape/avoidance (ICC = 0.93, p < 0.001), fear of pain (ICC = 0.94, p < 0.001), and physiological anxiety subscales (ICC = 0.96, p < 0.001) and good reliability for the cognitive anxiety (ICC = 0.85, p < 0.001). Inspection of the Promax rotation showed that each factor comprised of five items were consistent with the theoretical constructs of the original PASS-20 subscales.

Conclusion: The Arabic PASS-20 retained internal consistency and reliability with the original English version and can be used to measure pain anxiety symptoms in both pain and healthy individual samples in Libya.

Keywords: Anxiety; Fear of pain; Libya; Pain; Psychometric analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Funding

This study was funded by Leeds Beckett University.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in the studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Ethical approval was obtained from Leeds Beckett University and permission was granted from University of Sirt and Ibn Sina hospital to conduct the research. Written informed consent was provided by all participants prior to enrolment into the study.

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