Translation, validity and reliability of the persian version of the rapid assessment of physical activity questionnaire

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to produce a valid and reliable Persian version of the Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity (RAPA) questionnaire, which previously has been shown to be valid and reliable for assessing physical activity among older adults.

METHODS

Permission was obtained from the scale developer, who provided a copy of the the Linguistic Validation of the RAPA Qestionnaire, which utilizes a forward-backward translation methodology. Content validity, face validity, and construct validity of the questionnaire were then determined. Comparison of known groups (older adults with more or less than 50% balance confidence) was used to assess construct validity and the Leiden-Padua (LEIPAD) quality of life questionnaire were used to assess convergent validity. Three hundred older adults, who were members of the Qom retirement centers, participated in the study. Thirty participants completed the RAPA twice with a one-week interval to determine test-retest reliability.

RESULTS

Results of comparisons of known groups showed that the mean RAPA score of the older people with greater balance confidence was significantly higher. Significant correlations between most of the scores obtained from both RAPA and the LEIPAD questionnaires confirmed the convergent validity of the questionnaire. Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was as high as 0.94 showing that the test-retest reliability was good.

CONCLUSION

This study showed the Persian RAPA is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring physical activity among older individuals in both research and clinical contexts.

Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the rapid assessment of physical activity questionnaire (RAPA) in Hungarian elderly over 50 years

Background

Reliable and valid instruments are needed to estimate physical activity levels. The aim was to culturally adapt the “Rapid Assessment of Physical Activity” (RAPA) into Hungarian and to investigate the validity and reliability of this adapted version in the elderly over 50 years.

Methods

In our cross-sectional study 222 subjects were recruited in Hungary between December 2020 and January 2021(age 61.1 ± 7.9 years, 28% male). Criterion validity of RAPA and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ)—Hungarian long version was tested by Spearman’s rank correlation. The examination of repeatability was based on a group of 32 people, and on the one-week test–retest reliability approach, and in addition to this during the statistical analysis intra-class correlation coefficient was calculated. To examine the sensitivity and specificity of the RAPA, negative and positive physical activity values were calculated from the results of the long version of the IPAQ and the RAPA. We tested 4 hypotheses (3 validity, 1 reliability). We considered acceptable validity and reliability if > 75% of hypotheses were confirmed. Results: All of the hypotheses (100%) were confirmed. Based on results of the validity testing of the newly adapted questionnaire was showed a moderate correlation between the examined measurement tools (R = 0.542, p < 0.001). The test–retest results of the questionnaire (N = 32, R = 0.988, p < 0.001) showed strong association.

Conclusion

RAPA showed fair to moderate validity and strong test–retest reliability similar to other studies. Based on our study’s results the RAPA is a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure the elderly Hungarian population’s physical activity.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13102-022-00512-3.