Validation of the Dutch and the French version of the Tinnitus Questionnaire.

OBJECTIVES: To validate the Dutch and the French version of the Tinnitus Questionnaire and characterise the subscales. The original Tinnitus Questionnaire has already proven to be a usable measurement tool to discriminate complaining from non-complaining tinnitus patients and it provides differentiation into 5 dimensions.

METHODS: The English version of the TQ was used. The Dutch and the French version were obtained by the process of translation and back-translation. The TQ was assessed in 167 patients whose mother tongue was Dutch and who presented at the ENT department of the Antwerp University Hospital. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Factor analysis with Varimax oblique rotation was compared to the results from previous psychometric analysis of the original TQ.

RESULTS: The internal consistency of the Dutch version of the TQ proved to be very high, with a Cronbach's alpha value of 0.95. Independent factor analysis identified the five subscales in accordance with the Hiller and Goebel's findings: emotional and cognitive distress, intrusiveness, auditory perceptual difficulties, sleep disturbances and somatic complaints.

CONCLUSION: The Dutch and the French translation of the TQ are included here. The psychometric characters of the Dutch questionnaire are similar to the original English questionnaire. This questionnaire provides appropriate disease-specific health-related quality-of-life outcome measures in tinnitus patients. In addition to the TQ, we advise the incorporation of three equal-appearing interval scales in all tinnitus anamnesis and follow-up.