Validation of the French version of the Injury- Psychological Readiness to Return to Sport (I-PRRS-Fr) with athletic patients returning to sports after an anterior cruciate ligament operation.

SUMMARY Introduction: A precise and quantifiable decision-making must be applied to resume sport activities after injury as to minimize reinjury and performance loss. Amongst decision’s criteria, psychological factor must be considered. The aim of this thesis is to provide physiotherapists a valid tool allowing them to assess the psychological readiness of athletes. Psychological readiness could be assessed by an English validated questionnaire: the I-PRRS. This questionnaire is not yet validated in French. The primary purpose of this thesis is to validate the I-PRRS-Fr (French version of the I-PRRS) questionnaire for sportsmen who underwent an ACL reconstruction surgery (ACLR). Materials and methods: 60 control subjects and 74 experimental subjects (ACLR) took part in this study. The experiment was conducted remotely via Google Forms over one week. On D1, every subject completed the I-PRRS-Fr questionnaire, ACL-RSI questionnaire, demographic questionnaire and about the pathology for ACLR patients. Then, on D3 and D7, the experimental group completed the I-PRRS-Fr questionnaire. Results: The I-PRRS-Fr total scores showed a strong positive correlation with the ACL-RSI scores in the experimental group. The statistically significant difference in I-PRRS-Fr total scores between the injured athletes and control group provides an evidence of discriminative validity. The internal consistency reliability was good. Excellent test–retest reliability and agreement were demonstrated. There was a slight ceiling effect for item 1 and 3. Discussion: A strength of this study is that the I-PRRS-Fr may be used by professionals to assess the psychological readiness of the athlete before returning to sports after ACLR. A limitation of this study is that we only included participants who had undergone ACLR, while the I-PRRS-Fr scale is made for injured athletes in general. Conclusion: The results of the study tend towards the validation of the I-PRRS-Fr questionnaire. However, further studies are needed with a larger sample to be able to confirm the results obtained by this study and to limit biases as much as possible.