The Wayfinding Questionnaire-Turkish (WQ-TR): A study of cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric properties of validity and reliability

Year 2024, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 247 - 264, 30.04.2024

Nizamettin Burak Avcı Songül Aksoy

Abstract

Objectıves: Navigation and wayfinding is a neurocognitive skill that we often use in daily life. The aim of this study is to adapt the Wayfinding Questionnaire-Turkish (WQ-TR), which assesses the navigation complaints of individuals, and to assess psychometric properties of WQ-TR in healthy individuals.
Materials and Methods: This study was conducted with 363 healthy participants (203 F, 160 M) aged 18 and 69 (mean: 39.0±13.1). WQ-TR and Money's Road Map Test (RMT) were applied to all participants. Validity analyses were conducted with construct and concurrent validity. Factory structures of the questionnaire were formed with principal axis factoring in construct validity. The correlation between the RMT error counts and WQ-TR scores was evaluated for concurrent validity. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) and test-retest reliability were performed in reliability analyses.
Results: WQ-TR has 20 items and 3-factor structures: “Navigation and Orientation(NO)”, “Spatial Anxiety-Ambiguous(SA-A)” and “Spatial Anxiety-Organisation(SA-O)”. In line with the correlation between RMT error counts and WQ-TR scores, WQ-TR was found to have moderate validity. High internal consistency (a: 0.906) and high intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC: 0.976) were observed. WQ-TR showed satisfactory internal consistency, excellent test-retest reliability and moderate validity.
Conclusion: WQ-TR, the first Turkish questionnaire assessing navigation skills and showed perfect internal consistency, reliability and validity, was presented for clinical and scientific use.

Keywords

surveys and questionnaires, spatial navigation, orientation, psychometrics, self report

References

• Abma, I. L., Rovers, M., & van der Wees, P. J. (2016). Appraising convergent validity of patient-reported outcome measures in systematic reviews: constructing hypotheses and interpreting outcomes. BMC research notes, 9(1), 226.
• Baskett, L. (2005). Fear of orientation and mobility. International Congress Series,
• Beaton, D. E., Bombardier, C., Guillemin, F., & Ferraz, M. B. (2000). Guidelines for the process of cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures. Spine, 25(24), 3186-3191.
• Cánovas, R., León, I., Serrano, P., Roldán, M. D., & Cimadevilla, J. M. (2011). Spatial navigation impairment in patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy: evidence from a new virtual reality-based task. Epilepsy & Behavior, 22(2), 364-369.
• Claessen, M. H., Visser-Meily, J. M., de Rooij, N. K., Postma, A., & van der Ham, I. J. (2016). The wayfinding questionnaire as a self-report screening instrument for navigation-related complaints after stroke: internal validity in healthy respondents and chronic mild stroke patients. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 31(8), 839-854.
• Costello, A. B., & Osborne, J. (2005). Best practices in exploratory factor analysis: Four recommendations for getting the most from your analysis. Practical assessment, research, and evaluation, 10(1), 7.
• Darken, R. P., & Peterson, B. (2002). Spatial orientation, wayfinding, and representation. In Handbook of virtual environments (pp. 533-558). CRC Press.
• Driscoll, I., Hamilton, D. A., Yeo, R. A., Brooks, W. M., & Sutherland, R. J. (2005). Virtual navigation in humans: the impact of age, sex, and hormones on place learning. Hormones and behavior, 47(3), 326-335.
• Ekstrom, A. D., Spiers, H. J., Bohbot, V. D., & Rosenbaum, R. S. (2018). Human spatial navigation. Princeton University Press.
• Field, A. (2009). Discopering Statistics Using SPSS, Thrid Edition.
• Head, D., & Isom, M. (2010). Age effects on wayfinding and route learning skills. Behavioural brain research, 209(1), 49-58.
• Hort, J., Laczó, J., Vyhnálek, M., Bojar, M., Bureš, J., & Vlček, K. (2007). Spatial navigation deficit in amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(10), 4042-4047.
• Howard, M. C. (2016). A review of exploratory factor analysis decisions and overview of current practices: What we are doing and how can we improve? International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 32(1), 51-62.
• Lawton, C. A., & Kallai, J. (2002). Gender differences in wayfinding strategies and anxiety about wayfinding: A cross-cultural comparison. Sex roles, 47, 389-401.
• Lester, A. W., Moffat, S. D., Wiener, J. M., Barnes, C. A., & Wolbers, T. (2017). The aging navigational system. Neuron, 95(5), 1019-1035.
• Mathias, J., & Lucas, L. (2009). Cognitive predictors of unsafe driving in older drivers: a meta-analysis. International psychogeriatrics, 21(4), 637.
• Mendez-Lopez, M., Fidalgo, C., Osma, J., & Juan, M.-C. (2020). Wayfinding Strategy and Gender–Testing the Mediating Effects of Wayfinding Experience, Personality and Emotions. Psychology research and behavior management, 13, 119.
• Nazareth, A., Huang, X., Voyer, D., & Newcombe, N. (2019). A meta-analysis of sex differences in human navigation skills. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 26(5), 1503-1528.
• Nunnally, J. C. (1994). Psychometric theory 3E. Tata McGraw-hill education.
• Perrochon, A., Mandigout, S., Petruzzellis, S., Garcia, N. S., Zaoui, M., Berthoz, A., & Daviet, J. (2018). The influence of age in women in visuo-spatial memory in reaching and navigation tasks with and without landmarks. Neuroscience letters, 684, 13-17.
• Pintzka, C. W., Evensmoen, H. R., Lehn, H., & Håberg, A. K. (2016). Changes in spatial cognition and brain activity after a single dose of testosterone in healthy women. Behavioural brain research, 298, 78-90.
• Prestopnik, J. L., & Roskos–Ewoldsen, B. (2000). The relations among wayfinding strategy use, sense of direction, sex, familiarity, and wayfinding ability. Journal of environmental psychology, 20(2), 177-191.
• Rainville, C., Marchand, N., & Passini, R. (2002). Performances of patients with a dementia of the Alzheimer type in the Standardized Road-Map test of Direction Sense. Neuropsychologia, 40(5), 567-573.
• Ulrich, S., Grill, E., & Flanagin, V. L. (2019). Who gets lost and why: A representative cross-sectional survey on sociodemographic and vestibular determinants of wayfinding strategies. PloS one, 14(1), e0204781.
• van der Ham, I. J., & Claessen, M. H. (2020). How age relates to spatial navigation performance: functional and methodological considerations. Ageing research reviews, 58, 101020.
• van der Ham, I. J., Claessen, M. H., Evers, A. W., & van der Kuil, M. N. (2020). Large-scale assessment of human navigation ability across the lifespan. Scientific reports, 10(1), 1-12.
• van der Ham, I. J., Kant, N., Postma, A., & Visser-Meily, J. (2013). Is navigation ability a problem in mild stroke patients? Insights from self-reported navigation measures. Journal of rehabilitation medicine, 45(5), 429-433.
• Vlček, K., & Laczó, J. (2014). Neural correlates of spatial navigation changes in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 8, 89.
• Weir, J. P. (2005). Quantifying test-retest reliability using the intraclass correlation coefficient and the SEM. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 19(1), 231-240.
• Wolbers, T., & Hegarty, M. (2010). What determines our navigational abilities? Trends in cognitive sciences, 14(3), 138-146.
• Xie, Y., Bigelow, R. T., Frankenthaler, S. F., Studenski, S. A., Moffat, S. D., & Agrawal, Y. (2017). Vestibular loss in older adults is associated with impaired spatial navigation: data from the triangle completion task. Frontiers in neurology, 8, 173.