Translation, cross‐cultural adaptation, and validation of the Athlete Fear Avoidance Questionnaire into Arabic: A validation study

Psychological factors play a central role in rehabilitation following athletic injury. This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Athlete Fear Avoidance Questionnaire (AFAQ) into Arabic and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Arabic version (AFAQ-Ar) in Arabic-speaking athletes with musculoskeletal injuries, following the consensus-based standards for the selection of health measurement instruments guidelines. Translation and cross-cultural adaptation followed standardized procedures, including forward and back translation, expert committee review, and pretesting. The AFAQ-Ar was administered to Arabic-speaking athletes with musculoskeletal injuries to assess structural validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability. Construct validity was examined against a priori hypotheses using correlations with the Tampa Scale of Kinesophobia and the Pain Catastrophizing Scale. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability indices were calculated. Exploratory factor analysis identified 2 closely related factors accounting for 63.49% of the total variance. The AFAQ-Ar demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach α = 0.88) and excellent test-retest reliability, with intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from 0.95 to 0.99. Moderate positive correlations with the Tampa Scale of Kinesophobia and Pain Catastrophizing Scale supported construct validity. The AFAQ-Ar is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing fear avoidance beliefs in Arabic-speaking athletes with musculoskeletal injuries.