Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of the Persian version of Parkinson Fatigue Scale (PFS-16) in Patients with Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the common disorders in the central nervous system. Among non-motor symptoms, fatigue is the most widespread one with prevalence rates of 40-65 that can have an impact on the quality of life of patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and the reliability of the Persian version of Parkinson Fatigue Scale (PFS-16).

70 patients with PD (mean age: 62.7±11.6) participated in this study through non-probability and available sampling method. Test-retest reliability and internal consistency were used to measure the reliability and the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), Parkinson's disease questionnaire (PDQ-8) and Visual Analogue fatigue Scale (VAS-F) were employed to measure the criteria validity.

Cronbach's alpha and ICC of the Persian version of PFS-16 were both measured to be 0.97. In addition, Kappa coefficient for each item of the scale was measured to be between 0.76 and 1.00, which indicated a very good level of reliability. Correlations between PFS-16 and FSS, PDQ-8 and VAS-F were estimated to be 0.58, 0.51 and 0.49, respectively.

Results indicated high reliability and the validity of Persian-version of the mentioned scale. Therefore, its application in related studies is highly recommended.