Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Via Giuseppe La Masa, 19, Milan, 20156, Italy; Hearing Sciences, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2UH, United Kingdom; NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Ropewalk House, 113 the Ropewalk, Nottingham, NG1 5DU, United Kingdom.
Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Via Giuseppe La Masa, 19, Milan, 20156, Italy.
Hear Res. 2019 Jun;377:330-338. doi: 10.1016/j.heares.2019.02.008. Epub 2019 Feb 22.
Prevalence estimates depend largely on the nature of the question asked to define the presence of the health condition, and the literature on the population burden of tinnitus and hearing difficulties is no different in this respect. The lack of standardized questions for data collection limits comparison across studies and across countries. The purpose of this short Technical Note is to report the first attempt to establish a set of standard questions developed for use in population-based surveys, and their adaptation and translation from English into 11 European languages.
Four questions and their corresponding response options were adapted from existing population-based surveys to assess tinnitus prevalence, tinnitus symptom severity, use of healthcare resources for tinnitus and hearing difficulty. The translated versions (Bulgarian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish) were generated using recognized methods to achieve a "world-for-world" translation.
Translated versions were produced with acceptable functional equivalence to the original English-language version, as judged by a small panel of bilingual speakers who participated in the online field testing.
This work is the first of its kind to promote multi-national standardization by creating a set of tools that can readily be used across countries. These are currently being used in a European-wide study of tinnitus prevalence, and have wider application across English- and Spanish speaking countries including the Americas and Oceania.
流行率的估计在很大程度上取决于用于定义健康状况存在的问题的性质，在这方面，有关耳鸣和听力困难人群负担的文献也没有什么不同。由于缺乏用于数据收集的标准化问题，限制了研究之间以及国家之间的比较。本简短技术说明的目的是报告首次尝试建立一套标准问题，这些问题是为基于人群的调查而开发的，并将其从英语翻译成 11 种欧洲语言。
从现有的基于人群的调查中改编了四个问题及其相应的回答选项，以评估耳鸣的流行率、耳鸣症状的严重程度、耳鸣和听力困难的医疗资源利用情况。使用公认的方法生成翻译版本（保加利亚语、法语、德语、希腊语、意大利语、拉脱维亚语、波兰语、葡萄牙语、罗马尼亚语、俄语和西班牙语），以实现“逐字逐句”的翻译。
经过一个由双语参与者组成的小组在线进行现场测试评估，翻译版本与原始的英语版本具有可接受的功能等效性。
这项工作是首例通过创建一套可在多个国家使用的工具来促进多国标准化的工作。这些工具目前正在一项欧洲范围内的耳鸣流行率研究中使用，并在包括美洲和大洋洲在内的讲英语和西班牙语的国家中有更广泛的应用。
