Translation and validation of the Korean version of the Diabetic Foot Ulcer Scale-Short Form

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to translate the Diabetic Foot Ulcer Scale-Short Form (DFS-SF) into Korean and evaluate its psychometric performance in patients with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). The DFS-SF was translated into Korean using translation guidelines from the World Health Organization. The Korean version of DFS-SF (DFS-SF-K) went through the full linguistic validation process and was evaluated in 320 Korean patients with DFU. For this study, Cronbach's alpha was used to evaluate the reliability of the DFS-SF-K. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and known-group validity were conducted to examine construct validity. Correlation of the DFS-SF-K with SF-36 was used to test concurrent validity of the DFS-SF-K. Cronbach's alpha was >0.70 for all scales. Factor loadings of the 29 items on the six subscales ranged from 0.82 to 0.95. The six-subscale model was validated by CFA (x 2 /df = 4.55, P < 0.001, RMR = 0.06, GFI = 0.73, NFI = 0.90, TLI = 0.91, CFI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.10). Spearman's correlations and known-groups comparisons supported construct validity. The newly translated DFS-SF-K may be used to assess the impact of QoL with DFUs in Korean patients.