Cross-cultural adaptation of the Western Aphasia Battery - Revised screening test to Brazilian Portuguese: a
Márli de Borborema Neves1, John Van Borsel1, Mônica Medeiros de Britto Pereira2
1Universidade Veiga de Almeida, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to translate and cross-culturally adapt the Western Aphasia Battery - Revised (WAB-R) screening test, thus contributing to future applications of the instrument with Brazilian adults.
Methods:
The adaptation was based on a universalist perspective. The steps for conceptual, item, semantic and operational equivalence were strictly followed, resulting in a short version used in the pretest. The study participants were 30 individuals, between 18 to 89 years old; all were Brazilian speakers, with Portuguese as their first language. However, only 28 volunteers met the criteria for inclusion in the study. Two participants were excluded because they had low scores on the mini-mental state examination and were referred to geriatric assessment.
Results:
The short version of the WAB-R screening test, used in the pretest, allowed us to observe the behavior and language of the individuals during interactions, to collect impressions of overall communication, and to quantify communication ability by calculating the aphasia quotient and the language quotient, according to parameters of the original instrument.
Conclusion:
When adapting an instrument, it is important to maintain its original characteristics. However, the properties of measurement may not be in accordance with the psychometric properties of Brazilian culture. Therefore, we propose further analyses of the reliability and validation of the instrument in question in Brazil, which will occur by means of measurement and functional equivalence.
