Research Article Validation of Parkinson’s Disease-Related Questionnaires in South Africa Gill Nelson , 1,2 Ntombizodwa Ndlovu , 1 Nicola Christofides , 1 Tintswalo M. Hlungwani , 1 Irene Faust , 3 and Brad A. Racette 1,3 1 School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 27 St Andrews Rd, Parktown, 2193, South Africa 2 UCL Institute for Global Health, Research Department of Infection & Population Health, University College London, London, UK 3 Department of Neurology, Washington University School of Medicine, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8111, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Gill Nelson; gill.nelson@wits.ac.za Received 12 January 2020; Accepted 3 April 2020; Published 13 June 2020 Academic Editor: Graziella Madeo Copyright©2020GillNelsonetal.isisanopenaccessarticledistributedundertheCreativeCommonsAttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. ere are very few epidemiological studies investigating Parkinson’s disease (PD) in Africa. e hundreds of local languagesanddialectsmaketraditionalscreeningandclinicalevaluationtoolsdifficulttouse. Objective.eobjectiveofthestudy was to validate two commonly used PD questionnaires in an African population. Methods. e PD Screening Questionnaire (PDSQ)andParkinson’sDiseaseQuestionnaire(PDQ-39)weremodifiedandtranslatedintoAfrikaans,Setswana,andisiZuluand administered to a sample of healthy local residents. We assessed the internal consistencies and cluster characteristics of the questionnaires, using a Cronbach’s alpha test and exploratory factor analysis. e questionnaires were then administered to a population-basedsampleof416researchparticipants.Weevaluatedthecorrelationsbetweenthequestionnairesandbothatimed motor task and the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale motor subsection 3 (UPDRS3), using locally weighted scatterplot smoothing(LOWESS)regressionanalysisandSpearman’srankcorrelation. Results.Bothquestionnaireshadhighoverallinternal consistency(Cronbach’salpha=0.86and0.95,respectively).emodifiedPDQ-39hadevidenceoffivesubscales,withFactor1 explaining57%andFactor2explaining14%,ofthevarianceinresponses.ePDSQandPDQ-39scoreswerecorrelatedwiththe UPDRS3 score (ρ =0.35, P < 0.001; and ρ =0.28, P < 0.001, respectively). Conclusion. e translated PDSQ and PDQ-39 questionnairesdemonstratedhighinternalconsistencyandcorrelationswithclinicalseverityofparkinsonismandatimedmotor task, suggesting that they are valid tools for field-based epidemiological studies. 1. Introduction eglobalimpactofParkinson’sdisease(PD)isexpectedto reach pandemic proportions with the aging of both devel- oped and developing country populations [1–4]. As life expectancy on the African continent increases, neurode- generative diseases are becoming a growing public health concern. Population-based epidemiological studies of neu- rodegenerative disease in Africa are rare, and there are limited data from the 21 st century [5]. Screening tools designedandvalidatedinthedevelopedworld,primarilyin English,arenotappropriateformuchofAfricawherethere are hundreds of local languages and dialects [6], making screening for PD or parkinsonism using questionnaires validated in countries such as the USA and the UK challenging. South Africa has the second largest economy in Africa [7] and a predominantly black population with increasing lifeexpectancy[8].ecountryhasadynamicacademicand healthcare environment and the skills and infrastructure to conductworld-classscholarlyactivitiesandprovidemodern healthcare services. ere are 11 official languages, and PD Hindawi Parkinson’s Disease Volume 2020, Article ID 7542138, 9 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/7542138