Instruments to assess children’s language and speech translated and adapted into Brazilian Portuguese: an integrative literature review

Abstract

Purpose: to analyze the content and translation guidelines of instruments meant to assess language, speech sound production, and communicative skills of children, adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. Methods: a search was conducted in national and international databases to select articles on the assessment of language, speech, and communicative skills in children, considering the descriptors “translation”, “adaptation”, “cultural adaptation”, “cross-cultural adaptation”, “language”, “speech”, and “pragmatic”. The search was conducted in the SciELO, Virtual Health Library, PubMed/MEDLINE, and Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature. Results: eight assessment instruments compatible with the inclusion criteria were found. Conclusion: of the instruments found, four approached specific investigations, such as syntax, narrative, pragmatic skills, and speech sound organization, while the other four had a more encompassing profile, verifying form, content, and/or use (pragmatics). Concerning the guidelines, the most recurrent stages between the translation proposals were translation, conciliation of the previous stage or synthesis version, back-translation, reviewing committee, pretest, and final version. The conceptual, item and operational equivalences were frequently cited for verification.