A validation study of the Malay version of Minnesota nicotine withdrawal scale

Purpose: The present study aimed to translate and validate MNWS scale for practical clinical purposes among Malay speaking people.

Methods: A cross sectional design was used to elaborate the study data. Adult smokers who attend the Quit Smoking Clinic in Penang General Hospital at Penang State, Malaysia were included in the study. The translation was done according to standard guidelines: Forward translation, back translation from Malay to English language, pretesting and cognitive interviewing, and preparing the final version of the Malay scale for the reliability and validity study. Eligible subjects were interviewed by expert counsellor with the use of structured questionnaire to overcome any non-response by those who had reading difficulties. The interview was performed at day 7 of subject’s quit smoking date. Internal consistency and homogeneity was used to test reliability of the Malay version of MNWS. Furthermore factor analysis and concurrent validity was employed to validate the psychometric properties of the scale. 

Results: The Malay version of MNWS scale has excellent reliability with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. The test-retest reliability for the scale were presented and an excellent reliability and stability of the translated scale with Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient, r = 0.876 (P ˂ 0.001). In addition, There was a significant positive correlation between carbon monoxide level, FTND total score and number of cigarettes smoked per day with MNWS total score (r = 0.72, r = 0.68 and r = 0.68, P ˂ 0.001; respectively). A principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation yielded a uni-deminsional model which includes all the items of MNWS.

Conclusion: The Malay version of MNWS is reliable and a valid measure for withdrawal symptoms as well as the smoking urge and it is applicable for clinical practice and research study.