Assessment of neck awareness with fremantle neck awareness questionnaire in chronic neck pain patients: Turkish version, validity and reliability study

This study was conducted to investigate the validity and reliability of the Fremantle Neck Awareness Questionnaire (FreBFA) in Turkish with chronic neck pain individuals.The main questionnaire is "The Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire" and Prof.Benedict Wand who the actual questionaire writer permission was obtained.The questionnaire was converted by the author into a neck version and the neck version of the questionnaire was translated into Turkish.The patients were assessed with demographic information, severity of pain, Neck Disability Index (NDI), Tampa Kinesiophobia Scale (TKS), SF36 Quality of Life Questionnaire (SF36), Beck Depression Scale (BDS) and Beck Anxiety Scale (BAS). Test-retest evaluations of 37 patients were performed on our unit 3 days after the first application.Internal consistency Cronbach Alpha, ICC (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient), factor analysis in validity assessment, and the severity of pain with FreBFA, NDI, TKS, SF36, BDS and BAS questionnaires were examined in the reliability evaluation. FreBFA was evaluated in 111 patients with chronic neck pain.The internal consistency of FreBFA was found to be acceptable.When analyzed by Scree Plot graph, the questionnaire was found to have four factors.Questions 1, 2 and 3 are attention; 4 and 5 are proprioceptive sense; 6, 7, and 9 questioned the dimensions of the senses of neck shape and size, question 8 is ignore. When FreBFA and other questionnaire relations were examined, there were relations between low and moderate level (p <0.05). FreBFA is a valid and reliable questionnaire for individuals with chronic neck pain.The questionnaire was first carried out in the area of awareness and in the neck region and for the first time in Turkish. Our work will contribute to future work on different populations of neck awareness.