Background: The concept of “natural” after a facial aesthetic treatment represents an understudied area. We added scales to FACE-Q Aesthetics to provide a means to measure this concept from the patient’s perspective.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to develop and validate the FACE-Q Aesthetic Natural module.

Methods: Concept elicitation interviews with people having minimally invasive treatments were conducted to explore the natural concept and develop scales. Patient and expert input refined scale content. An online sample (ie, Prolific) of people who had a facial aesthetic treatment was analyzed with Rasch measurement theory to examine psychometric properties. A test-retest reliability study was performed, and construct validity was examined.

Results: Interviews with 26 people were conducted. Three scales were developed and refined with input from 12 experts, 11 patients, and 184 online survey participants. Data from 1358 online participants provided evidence of scale reliability and validity. Reliability was high with person separation index, Cronbach alpha, and intraclass correlation coefficient values without extremes ≥0.82. Tests of construct validity confirmed that the scales functioned as hypothesized. Higher scores on the Expectations scale were associated with how important it was to have a natural look and movement after treatment. In addition, higher scores on the Natural Appearance and Natural Outcome scales correlated with better scores on other FACE-Q Aesthetics scales, and were associated with the face looking and feeling natural and with overall satisfaction with facial appearance.

Conclusions: Many people seeking facial aesthetic treatments want to look natural after treatment. These new FACE-Q Aesthetics scales provide a means to measure the concept of natural from the patient’s perspective.

This article contains supplemental material located online at
www.aestheticsurgeryjournal.com.

Kathleen Armstrong MD

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