Acceptance and action questionnaire − substance abuse: translation into arabic, content validity and reliability

Background
Substance abuse is a chronic illness with complex and intervening treatment process. It is important to have measurement scale to help in the follow-up of individuals throughout the therapeutic and rehabilitation process. It helps to make patients confident in treatment phases and assist health professionals to track their clients’ progress, measuring acceptance and action towards therapeutic process, and its effect on commitment to treatment plan is essential for patients with substance use disorder.
Objective
The aim was to validate the Arabic version of acceptance and action questionnaire − substance abuse (AAQ-SA) and assess reliability of this questionnaire and translation into Arabic.
Patients and methods
AAQ-SA has been translated into Arabic. Methodological design was used to investigate content validity index (CVI) reported by eleven expert jurors. Judgment was done by eight psychiatry professors, one psychiatry assistant professor, one psychiatry consultant and an assistant lecturer of psychology, and then, the Arabic version was distributed among 45 substance abuse patients in recovery. Among them, six patients did not attend the second interview. A total of 39 rehabilitated substance abuse patients with remission period from 3 weeks to 28 months completed their interviews. Intraclass correlation coefficient ICC (inter-rater and intrarater agreement) and Cronbach’s α reliability coefficients were addressed to investigate reliability.
Results
The I-CVI Item CVI for relevance ranged from 0.717 to 1.0 and for clarity from 0.636 to 1.0. The S-CVI Scale CVI was 0.873 for both relevance and clarity. On the contrary, the e-CVI expert CVI ranged from 0.667 to 1.0 for relevance and from 0.778 to 0.944 for clarity. All inter- rater and intrarater correlation coefficients are positive and significant and ranges from 0.48 to 0.92 for inter-rater and from 0.44 to 0.9 for intrarater. The inter-rater and intrarater correlation coefficients of the total score were 0.83 and 0.85, respectively. The total Cronbach’s α of the total scale was 0.92. Cronbach’s α for value commitment and defused acceptance are 0.92 and 0.91, respectively. The mean total scores of pretest rater 1, pretest rater 2, and post-test rater 1 were 68.6±15.7, 70.7±17.9, and 70.6±17.1, respectively, with no statistically significant differences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, AAQ-SA Arabic version based on the results is valid, reliable, and stable, and its translation is convenient to the culture. More research studies should be done in the field of therapy and rehabilitation for patients with addiction problems in Egypt and the Arabic world.