The Persian version of the Cardiff Acne Disability Index. Reliability and validity study

OBJECTIVE: The Cardiff Acne Disability Index (CADI) assesses the impact of acne on a patients life. The aim of the present study was to translate the CADI into Persian language and to validate the Persian version.

METHODS: Using standard forward-backward translation, 2 bilinguals translated the CADI into Persian language. We back translated it into English and the final version was provided. We conducted this study from February through December 2004 on 100 patients with acne attending the Department of Dermatology, Jahrom Medical School, Jahrom, Iran who completed the Persian version of the CADI questionnaire. We carried out all statistical analyses using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 11 for Windows.

RESULTS: A total of 100 patients (15 men, 85 women) with acne participated in this study. The mean age of the patients was 20.76 ± 2.94 years. Scores of the CADI ranged from 2-14 (7.57 ± 2.58). Reliability analysis showed a satisfactory result (Cronbachs alpha coefficient = 0.79). Moreover, Pearsons correlation coefficient of 0.72 demonstrated the good internal consistency of the scale.

CONCLUSION: The Persian version of the CADI questionnaire is a reliable, valid, and valuable tool for assessing the impact of acne on a patient's life.