Translations

This report describes the reliability and validity of a French version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy – General (FACT-G) with a French sample of 493 cancer patients. The FACT-G consists of 27 items and four subscales: Physical (PWB), Functional (FWB), Social/Family (SFWB) and Emotional well-being (EWB). The study sample includes 64% with localized disease, 26% with metastases, 11% in remission, and 71% receiving radiation/chemotherapy. Internal consistency Cronbach alphas of the global FACT-G scale (0.90) and subscales (>0.75) are satisfactory (n =126). Test-retest reproducibility is satisfactory for all subscales and the global scale (n =87 to 93, r=0.74 to 0.90). ANOVA models show that PWB differentiated between the three disease stages; the global FACT-G and FWB discriminated between patients with metastases and others with localized disease or in remission; EWB only discriminated between metastases and localized disease; while SFWB did not discriminate between groups at different stages of cancer. Only the PWB subscale discriminated between patients with no history from those receiving chemotherapy (p ≤ 0.05). None of the scales discriminated between groups based on radiotherapy. These results may be useful in the design and interpretation of clinical trials involving French patients when the FACT-G is the outcome measure.

Assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQL) is important in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Despite the high prevalence of COPD in Germany, Switzerland and Austria there is no validated disease-specific instrument available. The objective of this study was to translate the Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ), one of the most widely used respiratory HRQL questionnaires, into German, develop an interviewer- and self-administered version including both standardised and individualised dyspnoea questions, and validate these versions in two randomised studies. We recruited three groups of patients with COPD in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The 44 patients of the first group completed the CRQ during pilot testing to adapt the CRQ to German-speaking patients. We then recruited 80 patients participating in pulmonary rehabilitation programs to assess internal consistency reliability and cross-sectional validity of the CRQ. The third group consisted ...

OBJECTIVE: The increasing proportion of older adults in the general population and the specific characteristics of this age group show the need for the development of specific instruments to measure quality of life in older adults. The study aimed at describing the development and validation of the Portuguese version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life for Older Persons (WHOQOL-OLD) module. METHODS: The WHOQOL-OLD instrument was administered in a sample of 424 older adults in the city of Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil, in 2005. The questionnaire comprises 24 items divided into six facets: sensory abilities; autonomy; past, present and future activities; social participation; death and dying; and intimacy. Besides the WHOQOL-OLD module, the WHOQOL-BREF, BDI and BHS instruments were also applied. The instrument’s internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. RESULTS: The instrument showed adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s coefficients rangin...

We present new Spanish norms for object familiarity and rated age of acquisition for 140 pictures taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980), together with data on visual complexity, image agreement, name agreement, word length (in syllables and phonemes), and five measures of word frequency. The pictures were presented to a group of 64 Spanish subjects, and oral naming latencies were

The aim of this study was to validate a translated version of the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) questionnaire in Spanish patients with hip or knee osteoarthritis (OA). The WOMAC questionnaire and the SF-36 were administered to a sample of 269 patients on the waiting list for hip or knee replacement. We studied the convergent validity and the item-scale correlation using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Spearman’s π. For the reliability study we used another sample of 58 patients who received the WOMAC twice within 15 days. The Pearson’s, Spearman’s π, and intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated. Internal consistency was measured by Cronbach’s α. The responsiveness study was carried out by resending the two questionnaires to all patients 6 months after surgical intervention; responsiveness was measured by means of the paired t-test, the effect size I and the standardised response mean. The Pearson’s coefficients for the convergent validity ranged from −0.52 to −0.63. The coefficients obtained for the item–scale correlation of the pain area were 0.74 or higher, 0.91 or higher for stiffness, and 0.61 or higher for function. When measuring the test–retest reliability, the coefficients ranged from 0.66 to 0.81. Internal consistency yielded a Cronbach’s α ranging from 0.81 to 0.93. The responsiveness showed an effect size I ranging from 1.5 to 2.2 in patients who underwent hip replacement; for those who underwent knee replacement the range was 1 to 1.8. The standardised response mean ranged from 1.3 to 1.9 for patients with hip OA; those with knee OA ranged from 0.8 to 1.5. The Spanish version of WOMAC is a valid, reliable and responsive instrument in patients with hip or knee OA.

This article reports on the Canadian-French translation of the Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Devices Scale (PIADS), a 26-item questionnaire that measures the quality of life (QoL) impacts of using assistive technologies from the person with disability's point of view. Following standard procedures, the study included forward and backward translations, committee reviewing, pre-testing with bilingual lay people, and psychometric evaluation of the translated questionnaire with subjects with mobility impairment (n = 83) and visual impairment (n = 37). The use of translators translating in their mother tongue and the participation of one author of the questionnaire contributed to the quality of the translation. We found that words that had equivalence in English and French did not necessarily cover the same areas of meaning. The subscales (n = 3) and total scale of the French PIADS achieved good test-retest stability (ICC of 0.77-0.90) and internal consistency (0.75-0.94). Concurr...

Background This study assesses the validity and reliability of the Spanish version of DN4 questionnaire as a tool for differential diagnosis of pain syndromes associated to a neuropathic (NP) or somatic component (non-neuropathic pain, NNP). Methods A study was conducted consisting of two phases: cultural adaptation into the Spanish language by means of conceptual equivalence, including forward and backward translations in duplicate and cognitive debriefing, and testing of psychometric properties in patients with NP (peripheral, central and mixed) and NNP. The analysis of psychometric properties included reliability (internal consistency, inter-rater agreement and test-retest reliability) and validity (ROC curve analysis, agreement with the reference diagnosis and determination of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values in different subsamples according to type of NP). Results A sample of 164 subjects (99 women, 60.4%; age: 60.4 ± 16.0 years), 94 (57.3%) with NP (36 with peripheral, 32 with central, and 26 with mixed pain) and 70 with NNP was enrolled. The questionnaire was reliable [Cronbach's alpha coefficient: 0.71, inter-rater agreement coefficient: 0.80 (0.71–0.89), and test-retest intra-class correlation coefficient: 0.95 (0.92–0.97)] and valid for a cut-off value ≥ 4 points, which was the best value to discriminate between NP and NNP subjects. Discussion This study, representing the first validation of the DN4 questionnaire into another language different than the original, not only supported its high discriminatory value for identification of neuropathic pain, but also provided supplemental psychometric validation (i.e. test-retest reliability, influence of educational level and pain intensity) and showed its validity in mixed pain syndromes.

Greek-French bilinguals were tested in three masked priming experiments with Greek primes and French targets. Related primes were the translation equivalents of target words, morphologically related to targets, or phonologically related to targets. In Experiment 1, cognate translation equivalents (phonologically similar translations) showed facilitatory priming, relative to matched phonologically related primes, in conditions in which morphologically related primes showed no effect (50-msec prime exposure). Cross-language morphological priming emerged at longer prime exposure durations (66 msec), but cognate primes continued to generate more priming than did those in the morphological condition. In Experiments 2 and 3, the level of phonological overlap across translation equivalents was varied, and priming effects were measured against those for matched phonologically related primes and those in an unrelated prime condition. When measured against the unrelated baseline, cognate primes showed the typical advantage over noncognate primes. However, this cognate advantage disappeared when priming was measured against the phonologically related prime condition. The results are discussed in terms of how translation equivalents are represented in bilingual memory.