Rasch validation of the revised body awareness rating questionnaire (BARQ-R) in adults with and without musculoskeletal pain

This study aimed to assess the validity of the Revised Body Awareness Rating Questionnaire (BARQ-R) in measuring body awareness among adults with and without musculoskeletal pain in the United States. The BARQ-R is a self-report questionnaire with 12 items, where higher scores indicate lower body awareness. The researchers used Rasch analysis to evaluate the questionnaire's structural validity. The findings suggest that after some modifications, the BARQ-R has good structural validity for both adults with and without musculoskeletal pain, but its measurement precision could be improved to better distinguish individual differences in body awareness.

• 1
  The 9-item Rasch-based BARQ-R had no misfitting items after rescoring 1 item and deleting 3 items in community-dwelling adults with and without musculoskeletal pain.
• 2
  The person mean location was − 0.62 ± 1.03 logits, indicating good targeting, with minimal floor and ceiling effects in the community-dwelling adults with and without musculoskeletal pain.
• 3
  For the subgroup of adults with musculoskeletal pain, the 12-item BARQ-R showed good targeting with a person mean location of -0.36 ± 0.88 logits after rescoring 2 items.