INTRODUCTION: Personal recovery is an important target in mental health care settings and has been suggested as the "bridging principle" between mental health care and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment. However, few psychometrically evaluated scales exist for measuring personal recovery in SUD research, and the questionnaire about the process of recovery (QPR), a measure of personal recovery widely used in the mental health field, has not been previously psychometrically evaluated in such a context. The aim of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of the 22- and 15-item versions of the Norwegian translation of the QPR in terms of factor structure and internal consistency in an opioid use disorder (OUD) sample.

METHODS: A total of 156 people with OUD filled out the QPR. Exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factor and maximum likelihood as extraction method was performed to assess the dimensionality of the 22- and 15-item versions of the Norwegian translation of the QPR. Internal consistency was calculated according to Cronbach's alpha.

RESULTS: Internal consistency for the 22-item version was α = 0.917. After removal of three items with low factor loadings internal consistency was α = 0.922. Internal consistency for 15-items version was α = 0.915. Exploratory factor analyses showed a clear one-factor solution for both the 22-item and 15-item version.

CONCLUSION: Both the 15- and the 22-item versions of QPR showed a clear one-factor solution; however, the 15-item version showed the strongest results in terms of explained variance. Thus, the 15-item version is the recommended version to use in SUD samples.