Cultural relevance and equivalence in the NLAAS instrument: integrating etic and emic in the development of cross‐cultural measures for a psychiatric epidemiology and services study of Latinos

Abstract

This paper describes the development, translation and adaptation of measures in the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS). We summarize the techniques used to attain cultural relevance; semantic, content and technical equivalency; and internal consistency of the measures across languages and Latino sub-ethnic groups. We also discuss some of the difficulties and challenges encountered in doing this work. The following three main goals are addressed in this paper: (1) Attaining cultural relevance by formulating the research problem with attention to the fundamental cultural and contextual differences of Latinos and Asians as compared to the mainstream population; (2) Developing cultural equivalence in the standardized instruments to be used with these populations; and (3) Assessing the generalizability of the measures -i.e., that the measures do not fluctuate according to culture or translation. We present details of the processes and steps used to

Understanding differences in past year psychiatric disorders for Latinos living in the US

“…Some measures, such as family burden and discrimination, were adopted from the National Survey of African American Life (Jackson et al, 2004) and the National Comorbidity Replication Study (Kessler & Merikangas, 2004). Key variables and scales with their psychometric properties are described in (Alegría, Vila et al, 2004). Most measures were selected based on face validity, internal reliability, and use in other studies of Latino mental health, maintaining the items of the originators.…”

Developmental Contexts and Mental Disorders Among Asian Americans

“…The NLAAS instrument was translated using standard translation and backtranslation techniques based on a comprehensive model focusing on five dimensions of cultural equivalence (Alegría, Vila, et al, 2004). The NLAAS instruments were not available in other Asian languages.…”

Estimating local prevalence of mental health problems

“…However, there are a few problems with such an approach: a) Measures of MHI-5 are less likely to exist in relevant national datasets; 42 b) Pr [Mental Health Problem j m i ] is a less precise measure of whether i has a mental health problem than is a direct measure; and c) the advantages of linearity disappear because p r i is nonlinear in m r i in equation (4). Point (b) is a speci…c example of an important general point.…”

“…3 There is signi…cant variation in how states organize their mental health systems. There are 19 states that provide services through city/county single or multi-jurisdictional governments (e.g., New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia), 38 that provide funding to community-based agencies (e.g., Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey), and 12 that provide services directly throught the state government (e.g., Louisiana, New York, Ohio) 4 (NASMHPD Research Institute, 2010). However, in all cases, services are provided at a local level.…”