Objective:

To establish an equivalent, valid and reliable Spanish version of the ASTA (Arrhythmia-specific Questionnaire in Tachycardia and Arrhythmia).

Method:

The questionnaire was applied to two groups in order to determine its face validity. The first group consisted of experts that assessed the clarity, conciseness, and precision, and the second with 453 individuals that evaluated its comprehensibility. For the content validity, the expert group evaluated the pertinence and relevance criteria. For the construct and reliability, the ASTA tool was used on 202 patients with different cardiac arrhythmias.

Results:

In the evaluation of facial validity with the group of experts, the tool gave a Lawshe value of greater than 0.7, and for the group of individuals, a comprehensibility of more than 90% was obtained for 37 items. The content validity gave a Lawshe value greater then 0.8, and a Fleiss kappa index greater than 0.9. The construct validity was obtained from the factor analysis. This analysis showed the presence of a single factor for the “symptoms burden” sub-scale, which explained 43.5% of the variance. Likewise, only one factor was obtained for the “health-related quality of life” sub-scale, which explained 40.6% of the variance. The reliability, measured by Cronbach alpha, was 0.8.

Conclusion:

The Spanish version of the ASTA questionnaire is valid and reliable for the symptoms burden and the impact on the health-related quality of life of patients with cardiac arrhythmias.

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