Fig. 1

Flowchart of the process of cross-cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the Exercise Adherence Rating Scale (EARS) in five stages: I) initial translation into Brazilian Portuguese – original version in British English was translated into Portuguese by two translators fluent in English and native speakers of Portuguese - a layman and an expert in health sciences, who worked independently; II) synthesis of translations – both translations were synthesized through consensus; III) back-translation into the original language – two translators fluent in Portuguese and native English speakers back-translated the synthetized version into English. They worked independently and both were blinded to the original version; IV) specialist committee – meeting with translators (n = 4), physiotherapists (n = 6) and PhDs and researchers with expertise in exercise (n = 4) to solve possible disagreements in translation, and create a pre-final version of EARS-Br and V) pre-testing phase – in which the pre-final version of the questionnaire was administered to patients with CLBP (n = 25) and assessed regarding comprehensibility of the instrument controlled through an open field form and cognitive interviews. Participants were encouraged to report their possible doubts, impressions of each item, response options, header items, instructions, and instrument layout