Cross-cultural adaptation of the Amsterdam inventory for auditory disability and handicap to Brazilian Portuguese.

INTRODUCTION

Patient-reported outcome measures, inventory and or questionnaire, allow patients to present their perspective of the impact of their individual condition on a day-to-day basis, independent of the analysis of test results by the expert clinician. Outcome measures are recommended when there is evidence showing their reliability, validity and sensitivity. There are standardized patient-reported outcome measures for hearing in English language; however, other languages lack these instruments.

OBJECTIVE

Adapt the Amsterdam inventory for auditory disability and handicap to Brazilian Portuguese and analyze its validation measures.

METHODS

We conducted two studies. In Study 1, we translated and adapted the Amsterdam inventory for auditory disability and handicap to Brazilian Portuguese according to good practice guidelines; this included the pre-test stage. In Study 2, we administered the Portuguese version to adults with and without hearing loss (n=31 and 18, respectively) and analyzed the measures of instrument validation, reliability, and reproducibility. Moreover, we calculated the correlation between pure tone thresholds and scores on the questionnaire.

RESULTS

The results obtained in Study 1 demonstrated the feasibility of the translation process and the instrument's cultural adaptation, as well as its applicability, resulting in the Portuguese version of the Amsterdam inventory for auditory disability and handicap. In Study 2, the results revealed construct values for the questions and domains, as well as for the total reliable score. The intra-interviewer test-retest condition showed excellent reproducibility (ICC=0.97). Finally, there was a strong positive correlation (r=0.83) between the mean pure tone threshold and the hearing difficulties values, as measured by the instrument's scores.

CONCLUSION

The English version of the Amsterdam inventory for auditory disability and handicap could be translated and adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. An analyses of the validation process yielded reliable, consistent, and stable results.