Department of Health Economics, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Kinderspitalgasse 15/1, 1090, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, OX3 7JX, UK.
BMC Psychiatry. 2018 Jun 5;18(1):173. doi: 10.1186/s12888-018-1762-3.
Mental health conditions affect aspects of people's lives that are often not captured in common health-related outcome measures. The OxCAP-MH self-reported, quality of life questionnaire based on Sen's capability approach was developed in the UK to overcome these limitations. The aim of this study was to develop a linguistically and culturally valid German version of the questionnaire.
Following forward and back translations, the wording underwent cultural and linguistic validation with input from a sample of 12 native German speaking mental health patients in Austria in 2015. Qualitative feedback from patients and carers was obtained via interviews and focus group meetings. Feedback from mental health researchers from Germany was incorporated to account for cross-country differences.
No significant item modifications were necessary. However, changes due to ambiguous wordings, possibilities for differential interpretations, politically unacceptable expressions, cross-country language differences and differences in political and social systems, were needed. The study confirmed that all questions are relevant and understandable for people with mental health conditions in a German speaking setting and transferability of the questionnaire from English to German speaking countries is feasible.
Professional translation is necessary for the linguistic accuracy of different language versions of patient-reported outcome measures but does not guarantee linguistic and cultural validity and cross-country transferability. Additional context-specific piloting is essential. The time and resources needed to achieve valid multi-lingual versions should not be underestimated. Further research is ongoing to confirm the psychometric properties of the German version.
心理健康状况会影响人们生活的各个方面，而这些方面往往无法被常见的健康相关结果测量所捕捉到。为了克服这些局限性，英国开发了基于 Sen 能力方法的 OxCAP-MH 自我报告式生活质量问卷。本研究的目的是开发一种具有德语语言和文化效度的问卷版本。
在进行正向和反向翻译后，2015 年奥地利的 12 名母语为德语的精神健康患者参与了问卷的文化和语言验证。通过访谈和焦点小组会议获得了患者和照顾者的定性反馈。来自德国的精神健康研究人员的反馈也被纳入其中，以考虑到跨国差异。
无需对项目进行重大修改。然而，由于措辞模糊、可能存在不同解释、具有政治争议的表述、跨语言差异以及政治和社会制度的差异，需要进行一些修改。研究证实，在德语环境下，所有问题都与精神健康状况的人群相关且可理解，从英语到德语国家的问卷具有可转移性。
专业翻译对于患者报告结局测量的不同语言版本的语言准确性是必要的，但并不能保证语言和文化的有效性以及跨国的可转移性。需要进行特定情境的试点研究。不应低估实现有效多语言版本所需的时间和资源。目前正在进行进一步的研究以确认德语版本的心理测量学特性。
