Transcultural translation and adaptation of the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo) for the Portuguese population

Abstract

<jats:p>ABSTRACT Purpose: to perform the transcultural adaptation and translation of the ABaCo battery for the Portuguese population and check its psychometric properties. Methods: initially, the translation and retroversion of ABaCo was done. A total of 40 participants without pathology were recruited. Two equivalent Forms (Form A and Form B) were used, consisting of linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic and context scales. The instrument was also applied to 12 people who were in the chronic phase after severe or moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI). For statistical analysis the following tests were used: Mann-Whitney U test, Student t test for independent samples, Pearson's correlation (the value is considered significant when p ≤ 0.05) and Cronbach's alpha (the value is considered minimally acceptable when superior to 0.65). Results: TBIs’ participants showed lower results as compared to those without neurological pathology. The evidence was discriminatory for the population with TBI, although, on some scales, it was not, due to the ceiling effect. Differences were not found between the two Forms. The results also showed the existence of correlation of schooling and age with some of the components of ABaCo, as verified in the original version. No differences in gender-conditioned responses were found. The battery showed good metrical qualities with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.90 (Form A) and 0.71 (Form B), for the total sample. Conclusion: ABaCo has proved to be an appropriate instrument for assessing communication in the Portuguese adult population. Despite the limitations, this instrument is expected to be useful in the evaluation of the communication, following TBI.</jats:p>

A cross-sectional study to assess pragmatic strengths and weaknesses in healthy ageing

“…The main purpose of this study was to provide a wide assessment of communicative-pragmatic ability in three age groups: two of older adults (65-75 and 76-86 years old) and one of younger adults (20-40 years old), by mean of a between-study design and using a single validated assessment tool, the Assessment Battery for Communication (ABaCo) [46][47][48][49]. ABaCo has been validated for the Italian population [48] (Angeleri et al 2012) and it has been partially adapted in English [50], Serbian [51] Finnish [52], and Portuguese [53]. The ABaCo is made up of five different evaluation scales-linguistic, extralinguistic, paralinguistic, context, and conversationalinvestigating participants' communicative-pragmatic ability.…”