Beyond translation ... cultural fit

Reaching non-English-speaking families, the economically disadvantaged, and those who are disproportionately represented in disease and injury statistics is challenging. This article describes the process of making a questionnaire developed in English, culturally appropriate for low-income, monolingual, Mexican and Mexican American mothers. The questionnaire, guided by the Health Belief Model, assesses maternal childhood injury health beliefs and was originally used with a 96% African American, English-speaking sample in the Eastern United States. Two research assistants from the target population worked with the non-Hispanic, bilingual investigator to redesign the questionnaire's language and presentation and to collect data. Sixty monolingual Latina mothers participated in the study to determine the internal consistency of the 42-item Spanish language Maternal Childhood Injury Health Belief Questionnaire (MCIHB). Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged from .76 (Benefits subscale) to .90 (Consequences subscale).