Translating and testing the Liver Disease Symptom Index 2.0 for administration to people with liver cirrhosis in Egypt

The Liver Disease Symptom Index (LDSI) 2.0 is a simple, short and specific liver disease questionnaire in English, but an Arabic version does not exist, therefore we translated the LDSI‐2.0 into Arabic and tested its psychometric properties in a pilot cross‐sectional study. A convenience sample of 38 patients with liver cirrhosis from one hospital in Cairo, Egypt, were interviewed for approximately 45 min. Patients completed a background data sheet, the translated LDSI‐2.0 and the Short Form (SF)‐36v₂. Construct convergent validity was examined by correlating LDSI‐2.0 items with the SF‐36v₂ eight domains. Reliability was estimated using measures of internal consistency, test–retest reliability and internal consistency reliability. Median completion time was 10 min. The correlation between the translated LDSI‐2.0 items and the SF‐36 domains confirmed that there was moderate to high overlapping between the two measures, suggesting convergent validity of the LDSI‐2.0. The LDSI‐2.0 showed good to very good retest reliability (kappa value 0.62–0.94). Chronbach's alpha coefficient for the multi‐item scales ranged from 0.73 to 0.96. The Arabic LDSI‐2.0 therefore has satisfactory validity, retest reliability and internal consistency.