Validation of Serbian Version of Dysfunctional Voiding Symptom Score (DVSS) Questionnaire

Objective: The aims of our study were to translate the dysfunctional voiding symptom score (DVSS) from English to Serbian; culturally adopt the items; assess the internal consistency and the test⁻retest reliability of DVSS in patients with dysfunctional voiding (DV); evaluate and test the construct and divergent validity of DVSS against demographic parameters (gender and education); and examine the level of explained variability for each item of DVSS against demographic parameters (gender and education).

Methods: The cross-sectional observational study included 50 patients with dysfunctional voiding aged 5 years and above. The DVSS questionnaire was translated from English into Serbian by the forward⁻backward method. Internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach α and test⁻retest reliability with intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). For validity testing we performed construct and divergent validity analyses.

Results: There was excellent internal consistency for every item except for Item 6 (0.787) and Item 3 (0.864), where internal consistency was good. The observed test/retest ICC for average measures was more than 0.75 (excellent) for all DVSS items. Gender and educational level does not correlate significantly with each item of DVSS ( > 0.05). For divergent validity, there were no significant differences in mean values of each item of DVSS between genders and different levels of education ( > 0.05). Variability that can be explained for gender and educational level was below 10%.

Conclusion: Translated DVSS is of adequate validity and reliability for assessing DV in children.