To analyze the reliability and validity of the WHODAS 2.0 instrument for women with urinary incontinence (UI).
This is a methodological study with Brazilian women with complaints of urge, stress or mixed UI, over 18 years old, without cognitive disorders. The WHODAS 2.0 (36-item version) and the auxiliary instruments were applied through face-to-face and telephone interviews after 7-14 d. The psychometric properties evaluated were: Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for intra-rater test-retest, Spearman’s correlation coefficient (rho) for construct validity of WHODAS 2.0 with auxiliary instruments; and ANOVA for discriminative validity with UI severity.
101 women with UI with a mean age of 50.71 ± 10.39 were included. WHODAS 2.0 showed good reliability in all domains and excellent reliability in the total score (>0.80). The intra-evaluator test-retest showed ICC values between 0.59 and 0.87 ( < 0.001). We observed a positive correlation between the WHODAS 2.0 domains and the instruments recommended by International Continence Society (ICS), with greater emphasis on moderate correlation with the Urinary Impact Questionnaire (IUQ-7) subscale (rho = 0.730  < 0.001).
The WHODAS 2.0 instrument is a reliable and valid questionnaire for investigating the functioning and disability of women with UI.