German Translation and Validation of the freezing of Gait Questionnaire in Patients with Parkinson's Disease

Background. freezing of gait (fog) is a disabling parkinsonian symptom. the freezing of gait questionnaire (fog-q) reliably detects fog in patients with parkinson's disease (pd). objectives. the aim of this study was to develop a german translated version of the fog-q and to assess its validity. methods. the translation was accomplished using forward-backward-translation. the construct validity of the fog-q was examined in twenty-seven german native speaking pd patients. convergent validity was assessed by correlating the fog-q with the movement disorder society-unified parkinson's disease rating scale (mds-updrs) ii-iii,the parkinson disease questionnaire 39 (pdq-39),and the timed up and go test (tug). divergent validity was assessed by correlating the fog-q with the mds-updrs i. the internal consistency was measured using cronbach's alpha (cα). results. a good internal structure of the fog-q was found (c α = 0.83). significant moderate correlations between the fog-q and the mds-updrs item 2.13 (freezing) (r s = 0.568,p = 0.002) and between the fog-q and the pdq-39 subscale mobility (r s = 0.516,p = 0.006) were found. the lack of correlation with the mds-updrs i demonstrated good divergent validity. conclusion. the german fog-q is a valid tool to assess fog in german native speaking pd patients. © 2015 anina vogler et al.