Rated pleasantness and relevance of Brazilian-Portuguese adjectives for future assessment instruments.

Abstract

In the present study we present Brazilian normative ratings of pleasantness and relevance for a sample of German adjectives, with the aim of contributing to the development of psychosocial and neuropsychological instruments, among other related fields. Three judges validated a preliminary list of 186 German adjectives translated to Brazilian Portuguese. A coefficient of content validity (CCV) was obtained to evaluate the degree of agreement among the judges in two dimensions: equivalence and clearness. The final list contained 136 items. The CCV for the aggregate of the 136 adjectives was .90 for equivalence and .91 for clearness. These adjectives were subsequently rated for pleasantness and relevance by 385 Brazilian participants aged 17 to 68 years. The Brazilian ratings were compatible with the original German ratings. Agreement frequency was 73-99% for pleasantness and 44-96% for relevance. These norms may be useful for both national and cross-cultural studies between Germany and Brazil and can be used in a wide range of fields including social cognition, cognitive psychology, and clinical neuropsychology. Importantly, items from this list of adjectives can be used to develop instruments to assess memory, language, and mental representations, among other cognitive processes.