American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Standardized Assessment Form: Russian Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation

American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Standardized Assessment Form (ASES) is one of the most widely used shoulder outcome reporting measure. However, it has not been validated in the Russian language. Purpose of this study is a cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the ASES. Materials and methods. The group of 93 patients with various shoulder pathology (39 males and 54 females) with median age of 49 years was included into the study. In the first stage the authors performed language and cultural adaptation of the ASES questionnaire to obtain a Russian version maximally matching the original. Further the authors studied the psychometric properties of the questionnaire (reliability, validity, responsiveness), the effects of maximum and minimum values (floor and ceiling effects) and estimated the coefficients of internal consistency of Cronbach's alpha and reproducibility. 20 patients were selected to assess reproducibility by test-retest method, those patients filled out the ASES questionnaire at first appointment with an orthopedic trauma surgeon and repeatedly in 7 days; the obtained data was evaluated by an intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). In the framework of the present research the authors assessed the validity of the obtained scale, including the correlation of the scores of the examined questionnaire with the scores by the DASH questionnaire validated in the Russian Federation to check criteria validity. Results. The study resulted in obtaining the assessment scale fully matching the original ASES version with minor linguistic and cultural features. The ASES median results was Me = 68.7 [32.6; 93.8]; no maximum and minimum scores were obtained. The Russian version of the questionnaire has good psychometric properties with internal consistency of Cronbach alpha 0.72. The overall intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of the ASES questionnaire was 0.95 (p<0.05). There were no statistically significant differences between the general group and the test-retest group by gender, age and type of shoulder pathology. Correlation coefficient obtained in the scope of the present research between the ASES and DASH scales was 0.9, and the GRI index was 2.8. Conclusion. Russian version of the ASES questionnaire has good psychometric properties and may be recommended to evaluate functional status of patients with shoulder joint pathology and treatment dynamics.