Abstract

Aim:  As pain is common in children and adolescents and musculoskeletal pain is an emerging research field in adolescents, one way to measure the pain and impact is to use questionnaires. The purpose was to develop and test-retest a questionnaire in musculoskeletal pain in adolescents.

Method: The Teen Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire Extended version (TNMQ-E) was developed and tested in a pilot study. Thereafter, and with consultation of a group of experts in the area, the questionnaire was revised to the final version.  82 participants (age range 9-15, 52 boys and 30 girls) answered the final version of the questionnaire with a 24-hour interval in a school in the Stockholm area and it was subsequently collected to assess the test-retest reliability. Cohen´s kappa coefficient (κ), 95 % confidence interval and ICC 2,1 was used to evaluate the correlation.

Results: The questionnaire can be divided in three parts, pain prevalence, pain experience and pain impact. Pain prevalence showed moderate correlation overall (κ 0,42-0,92), but pain experience (κ0,5-0,93 & ICC 2,1 0,5-0,99) and pain impact (-0,03-1) demonstrated a substantial to high correlation. TNMQ-E questionnaire demonstrated overall substantial test-retest reliability.

Conclusion: TNMQ-E is a questionnaire that seems to be a tool epidemiological purposes that can be self-administered in an adolescent population with substantial correlation.