Beyond translation ... cultural fit

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Cross-cultural Adaptation
• Health Disparities

Background:

• Reaching diverse, underserved populations with health information is challenging.
• Existing health questionnaires may not be culturally or linguistically appropriate for all groups.
• Low-income, monolingual mothers are often underrepresented in injury statistics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the process of culturally adapting an English-language questionnaire on maternal childhood injury beliefs.
• To assess the internal consistency of the adapted Spanish-language questionnaire among monolingual Latina mothers.

Main Methods:

• The Health Belief Model guided the adaptation of an existing questionnaire.
• A bilingual investigator and research assistants from the target population collaborated on redesigning language and presentation.
• Sixty monolingual Latina mothers completed the Spanish Maternal Childhood Injury Health Belief Questionnaire (MCIHB).

Main Results:

• The adapted 42-item Spanish MCIHB questionnaire was developed.
• Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha coefficients.
• Coefficients ranged from .76 (Benefits subscale) to .90 (Consequences subscale), indicating good reliability.

Conclusions:

• The culturally adapted Spanish MCIHB questionnaire is a reliable tool for assessing childhood injury health beliefs in low-income, monolingual Mexican and Mexican American mothers.
• This adaptation facilitates better reach and understanding within this specific demographic.
• The study highlights the importance of culturally sensitive instrument development in public health research.