Translation and Cultural Adaptation into Portuguese of the Quality of Dying and Death Scale for Family Members of Patients in Intensive Care Units

Abstract

The translation and cultural adaptation of the Quality of Dying and Death in Brazil may provide a reliable and reproducible scale for collecting and analyzing data on the process of dying and death, given the absence of Brazilian studies that have produced or used scales in this topic. The purpose of this study was to perform the translation and cultural adaptation of the Quality of Dying and Death (QODD 3.2a) scale for intensive care patients’ relatives into Portuguese (Brazil). This methodological study was carried out in a public university of the São Paulo State University (UNESP) medical school, São Paulo, Brazil, in three stages: translation and back-translation by two native-speaking independent professionals, analysis by a committee of specialists, and a pre-test phase. The final version was created by seven experts after making semantic, idiomatic, and cultural changes to 16 items. The results indicated a satisfactory content validation index (CVI ≥ 0.80). This version was applied on 32 relatives of patients who were hospitalized in a public hospital in the interior of São Paulo. No item was excluded from the instrument. The content and face validity were achieved to a satisfactory standard, in addition to reaching the minimum parameters recommended in the literature. The Portuguese version of QODD 3.2a for relatives of deceased patients in intensive care is appropriate and culturally adapted for use in Brazil.

Psychometric validation of Quality of Dying and Death in Brazilian family members

“…Besides being less costly and less complex than the development of a new instrument, (22,23) its validation enables exploring primary experiences, whose constructs remain under the same standpoint of analysis, but adapted to Brazilian culture, as previously done for other languages, such as Spanish, German, Chinese and Persian, with versions containing 31, 25 and 14 items. (10)(11)(12)(13) As the translation and cultural adaptation of the QODD 3.2a (17) has consisted only of the rst step of a process to make it reliable and suitable for application to the Brazilian context, (35) the present study confers continuity to the psychometric validation process to certify its representativeness as a valid method for measuring the construct that it indeed proposes to measure. (15,16) The entire validation process of an instrument in a different cultural context requires a rigorous psychometric validation process, including the de nition of levels of standardization for evaluation, but must excel by evidence capable of ensuring that the instrument is useful as a measurement tool.…”

“…2,6) The present study intends to give continuity to the validation process to evaluate the representativeness of the QODD 3.2a as a valid instrument for measuring the construct of what it indeed proposes to measure (15,16) after the cultural adaptation and content validation for the Brazilian context. (17) Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the QODD 3.2a for family members of patients who died in adults intensive care units.…”

Psychometric Properties of the Brazilian Version of the Quality of Dying and Death for Adult Family Members of ICU Patients

“…As the translation and cultural adaptation of the QODD 3.2a [ 15 ] has consisted only of the first step of the process to make it reliable and suitable for application to the Brazilian context, the present study confers continuity to the psychometric validation process to certify its representativeness as a valid method for measuring the construct that it indeed proposes to measure. The entire validation process of an instrument in a different cultural context requires a rigorous psychometric validation process, including the definition of levels of standardization for evaluation, but must excel through evidence ensuring that the instrument is useful as a measurement tool.…”

“…The present study intended to give continuity to the validation process to evaluate the representativeness of the QODD 3.2a as a valid instrument for measuring the construct of what it indeed proposes to measure after cultural adaptation and content validation for the Brazilian context [ 15 ].…”

“…The final version was created by seven experts after making semantic, idiomatic, and cultural changes to 16 items. The global average for CVI was 0.99, indicating an acceptable value and adequate representation in this study (≥0.80) [ 15 ].…”