SHORT REPORT Cultural and linguistic validation of acne-QoL in French J. Tan, †,‡, * A. O’Toole, § X. Zhang, – B. Dreno, †† Y. Poulin ‡‡,§§ † Department of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada ‡ Windsor Clinical Research Inc., Windsor, Ontario, Canada § Faculty of Health Sciences (Medicine), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada – Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada †† Dermato-Oncology Unit, CHU Nantes – Place Alexis Ricordeau, France ‡‡ Department of Medicine, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada §§ Centre de Recherche, Dermatologique du Quebec metropolitan, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada *Correspondence: J. Tan. E-mail: jerrytan@bellnet.ca Abstract Background Acne-Quality of Life (acne-QoL) is a facial acne-specific quality-of-life instrument developed in English. Objective Our objective was to translate and validate acne-QoL in French and to establish the reliability and responsivity of this measure. Methods Acne-QoL was translated into French (acne-QoLfr) in accordance with international methodological recommendations. The validated French version of the Cardiff Acne Disability Index (CADIfr) was used as a comparator. Acne patients in Quebec (n = 20) and France (n = 14) completed the acne-QoLfr and CADIfr on three occasions over 3 months (day 0, day 2–3, day 60–90). Results A total of 34 patients were recruited. Pearson’s correlation for total acne-QoLfr scores at day 0 and day 2–3 was 0.77. Of the four domains comprising the acne-QoLfr, correlations were highest for symptoms (0.85) and lowest for the role-emotional domain (0.66). At day 60–90, total acne-QoLfr scores increased by a mean of 19.7 points, reflecting improved quality-of-life with acne therapy and demonstrating responsivity of the instrument. Conclusion Acne-QoLfr is a linguistically and culturally validated tool for facial acne that is both reliable and responsive. Received: 1 April 2011; Accepted: 6 July 2011 Conflict of interest Dr Tan is an advisory board member, speaker, consultant and ⁄ or investigator for Berlex, Bayer, Cipher, Dermik, Galderma, Photocure, and Stiefel ⁄ GSK. Dr Poulin has been an investigator for Photocure and Galderma. Dr Dreno is an advisory board member, speaker, consultant and ⁄ or investigator for Galderma, Roche Posay, Intendis, Fabre, Labcatal. Ms O’Toole and Mr Zhang have no conflicts to declare. Funding sources None. Introduction The psychosocial impact of disease is an emerging component of the clinical paradigm and uniquely provides a patient-reported dimension. Evaluation of disease impact on quality-of-life (QoL) provides an objective measure of patient perceptions and experi- ences in physical, psychological and social domains. Previous stud- ies have demonstrated that acne can be associated with a spectrum of psychosocial abnormalities including depression, suicidal idea- tion, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, embarrassment and social inhibition. 1–5 Detection of these issues can be facilitated by the use of disease-specific psychometric instruments, as they have greater sensitivity than more general measures. For acne, several have been developed – Assessment of the Psychological and Social Effects of Acne (APSEA), 6 Acne Disability Index (ADI), 7 Cardiff Acne Disability Index (CADI), 8 Acne-Quality of Life Scale (AQOL) 9 and Acne-Quality of Life (acne-QoL). 10 Of these, the acne-QoL was developed by a combination of subject-perceived importance and conventional psychometric methodology. 10 Furthermore, it has been validated for internal consistency, reliability, convergent and divergent validity and responsivity. 11,12 As with many QoL questionnaires originally developed in English, the multilingual nature of populations and interna- tional research projects provide impetus to adapt these into lan- ª 2011 The Authors JEADV 2011 Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology ª 2011 European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-3083.2011.04193.x JEADV