[Development of the Portuguese version of MOS SF-36. Part I. Cultural and linguistic adaptation]

No one aims at applying generic measures as substitutes for other more traditional clinical procedures. The whole history of the evolution of these types of measures has been based on comparisons with clinical measures, always seen by researchers as ways to validate health outcome measures and as a process to be recognized by clinicians as a way to detect changes in time not always detected by the usual measures. The measurement instrument presented in this paper is the Portuguese version of the MOS SF-36, originally a result of the Medical Outcomes Study, a study carried out by Rand Corporation researchers in the 80's. One of the objectives of these researchers was precisely to develop instruments to be used in continuous monitoring of outcomes. This paper describes the first time MOS SF-36 was culturally adapted to Portuguese, validated and implemented. The first part mentions some of the foundations and developments of the original instrument as well as some results obtained from some specific applications. The second part introduces operational definitions for each of the eight scales and describes the SF-36 measurement model as well as the factor structure with two dimensions. Next, we present the design used by us to transform the data from the time they are collected from the respondents to the time they are ready to be further used. Finally, the methodology used to culturally adapt the MOS SF-36 and create a Portuguese version which is culturally equivalent are presented.