The Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence Sexual Questionnaire (PISQ-12): validation of the Dutch version

Objectives and hypothesis To establish the reliability and validity of the Dutch version of the Pelvic Organ Prolapse/Urinary Incontinence Sexual Questionnaire (PISQ-12) in women with pelvic floor dysfunction. Methods The PISQ-12 was translated into Dutch following a standardized translation process. A group of 124 women involved in a heterosexual relationship who had had symptoms of urinary incontinence, fecal incontinence and/or pelvic organ prolapse for at least 3 months were eligible for inclusion. A reference group was used for assessment of discriminative ability. Data were analyzed for internal consistency, reproducibility, construct validity, responsiveness, and interpretability. An alteration was made to item 12 and was corrected for during the analysis. Results The patient group comprised 70 of the 124 eligible women, and the reference group comprised 208 women from a panel representative of the Dutch female population. The Dutch PISQ-12 showed an adequate internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.57 - 0.69, increasing with correction for item 12 to 0.69 - 0.75, for the reference and patient group, respectively. Scores in the patient group were lower (32.6 +/- 6.9) than in the reference group (36.3 +/- 4.8; p= 0.0001), indicating a lower sexual function in the patient group and good discriminative ability. Reproducibility was excellent with an intraclass correlation coefficient for agreement of 0.93 (0.88 - 0.96). A positive correlation was found with the Short Form-12 Health Survey (SF-12) measure representing good criterion validity. Due to the small number of patients who had received treatment at the 6-month follow-up, no significant responsiveness could be established. Conclusions This study showed that the Dutch version of the PISQ-12 has good validity and reliability. The PISQ-12 will enable Dutch physicians to evaluate sexual dysfunction in women with pelvic floor disorders.