Translating and Adapting the DISCERN Instrument Into a Simplified Chinese Version and Validating Its Reliability:...

Area of Science:

• Health Communication
• Medical Information Quality Assessment
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Patient access to high-quality health information varies significantly.
• Existing quality assessment tools are predominantly in English.
• There's a need for validated tools in simplified Chinese for the Chinese population.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate and adapt the DISCERN instrument into simplified Chinese.
• To validate the psychometric properties of the new Chinese version (C-DISCERN).
• To provide a reliable tool for assessing patient-oriented health information on treatment choices in China.

Main Methods:

• Rigorous translation and adaptation of the DISCERN instrument.
• Content validation using health educators and assessment of 15 lung cancer materials.
• Psychometric validation including translation equivalence, content validity index, Cronbach's alpha, and Cohen's kappa.

Main Results:

• The simplified Chinese version of DISCERN (C-DISCERN) was successfully developed.
• High content validity for clarity (0.98) and relevance (0.94).
• Demonstrated good reliability with Cronbach's alpha of 0.93 and Cohen's kappa of 0.53.

Conclusions:

• C-DISCERN is the first simplified Chinese version of the DISCERN instrument.
• The C-DISCERN is a valid and reliable tool for assessing the quality of patient-targeted health information.
• This tool will aid Chinese patients in evaluating health information regarding treatment choices.