The Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) / Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire is used to measure the extent of functional restrictions brought on by pain in low back pain sufferers. The questionnaire gives the user details on a low back pain patient’s overall everyday functioning. Six response alternatives are available for the following items: pain intensity, self-care (washing, dressing), lifting, moving around, sitting or standing, sleeping, sex life, social life, and travel/transportation. The first response option (score 0) denotes the absence of pain-related restrictions, whereas the sixth response option (score 5) denotes the highest perceived restriction of an activity caused by pain. In the literature, the OLBPDQ is also frequently referred to as the ODI.
According to Sheahan et al. (2015), group mean construct validity was 0.734±0.094 (as measured by a correlation coefficient), test-retest reliability was 0.937±0.032 (as measured by an intraclass correlation coefficient), and internal consistency was 0.876±0.047 (as measured by Cronbach’s alpha).
Each component is assigned a value between 0 and 5, with 5 indicating the most disability. The index is calculated by dividing the total score by the range of scores and multiplying the result by 100 to get the index’s percentage value. As a result, for each unanswered question, the denominator is reduced by 5. If a patient marks more than one statement in a question, the statement with the highest score is recorded as true evidence of disability.
