Cross-cultural translation and adaptation of the Readiness for Return To Work questionnaire for Dutch cancer survivors

Objective

Effective interventions supporting cancer survivors in work participation are lacking, possibly due to the poor fit between interventions and cancer survivors' needs.

The 'Readiness for Return To Work' (RRTW) questionnaire could facilitate intervention development tailored to cancer survivors' needs. We performed a cross-cultural translation and adaptation of this questionnaire into Dutch and pre-tested its psychometric properties among cancer survivors.

Methods

Questionnaire translation and adaptation were conducted using a systematic approach of: forward translation, synthesis, backward translation, consolidation of translations with an expert committee, and pre-testing. Pre-testing consisted of interviewing 40 cancer survivors, who completed the questionnaire.

Results

The translated and adapted RRTW questionnaire showed reasonable psychometric properties, that is high item-to-stage correlations and internal consistency for all RRTW stages, except for the prepared for action - self-evaluative stage.

Conclusions

The translated and adapted RRTW questionnaire may be useful for tailoring interventions to support cancer survivors in returning to and maintaining at work.

However, some items showed poor psychometric properties and several factors, important for work participation, are not captured, for example personal, disease-, treatment- and/or work-related characteristics. We recommend to further test the RRTW questionnaire and to use it in combination with additional measurement instruments when developing tailored work participation interventions.