Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Exercise Adherence Rating Scale (EARS) into Danish

The Exercise Adherence Rating Scale (EARS) is a self-administrated questionnaire designed to measure adherence to prescribed home-based exercises in a British population. In a Danish context, no reliable and valid questionnaires are available to measure exercise adherence. This study aimed to translate and cross-culturally adapt the EARS into Danish following international guidelines and to provide insights about construct validity in a Danish population with longstanding hip pain. The EARS was translated and cross-culturally adapted into Danish using a forward-backward method. The understanding and interpretability of the EARS were evaluated with semi-structured interviews in 24 patients with longstanding hip pain due to hip dysplasia (22 females; median age 30 (IQR 24-37)). These patients were prescribed with home-based exercises. Using Spearman’s correlation, construct validity was evaluated by assessing if the Danish version of EARS was correlated with completed exercise sessions and self-reported pain and sport/recreation function. The EARS was translated and cross-culturally adapted into Danish following minor adjustments. The EARS was statistically significantly correlated to completed exercise sessions (p=0.005), self-reported pain (p=0.005) and sport/recreation function (p<0.03). In patients with longstanding hip pain, the Danish EARS seems suitable to measure adherence to prescribed exercises, however, further evaluation of measurement properties may be needed.