Swedish translation and cultural adaptation of the General Well-Being Schedule for patients with olfactory and...

Quality of life (QoL) is largely determined by our psychological well-being, yet commonly used somatic QoL measures often emphasize physical symptoms. Consequently, psychological needs in individuals who lack physical comorbidities are often overlooked. The General Well-Being Schedule (GWB) is a validated tool for assessing well-being, without focusing on physical dysfunction or being disease specific. As sensory impairments are strongly linked to reduced QoL, a Swedish GWB could have substantial clinical value.

To translate and culturally adapt the GWB into Swedish following the guidelines of the International Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), and to establish adequate content validity of the resulting instrument.

The GWB was translated into Swedish from English by following the ISPOR guidelines. Forward and backward translations were performed. Both healthcare professionals and patients with olfactory or hearing disorders contributed their opinions on the translation through focus groups, interviews, and ratings. Based on their input, we calculated the Scale Content Validity Index (S-CVI) and the Item Content Validity Index (I-CVI), to measure the questionnaire's overall content validity and the content validity of each item, respectively.

The focus groups and interviews resulted in several linguistic and cultural adjustments. Content validity was excellent for the questionnaire as a whole with an S-CVI of 0.91. Out of the 18 questions, 16 had an excellent I-CVI (mean = 0.94).

The GWB was successfully translated and culturally adapted for use in Sweden, following the ISPOR guidelines. The excellent content validity of the translation supports the relevance of the translated instrument.