A pilot study of a systematic method for translating patient satisfaction questionnaires

Area of Science:

• Healthcare quality assessment
• Cross-cultural adaptation of instruments
• Psychometric validation

Background:

• Patient satisfaction is a key healthcare quality indicator.
• Limited availability of validated patient satisfaction instruments in China, particularly for nursing services.
• Need for reliable translation and cultural adaptation of existing tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report on a pilot study evaluating a method for simultaneous content validity and translation quality assessment.
• To assess English-to-Chinese translations of two patient satisfaction questionnaires.
• To determine the suitability of the La Monica-Oberst Patient Satisfaction Scale and the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems for use in China.

Main Methods:

• Descriptive comparative pilot study utilizing content validity indexing.
• Evaluation of two patient satisfaction questionnaires (La Monica-Oberst and HCAHPS) by nursing faculty and patients.
• Assessment of item relevance (1-4 scale) and translation quality (binary rating) by bilingual nurse faculty.

Main Results:

• High relevance scores for both questionnaires by nurse raters (0.96 and 0.95) and patients (0.89 and 0.95).
• Statistically significant differences observed between nurse and patient relevance scores (P = 0.0135).
• Demonstrated feasibility of the simultaneous content validity and translation quality assessment method.

Conclusions:

• Content validity indexing is a valuable method for evaluating survey instruments during translation.
• The approach facilitates the selection and adaptation of patient satisfaction tools for different cultural contexts.
• The study supports the use of this combined methodology for ensuring instrument quality in cross-cultural research.