Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Nordic Occupational Skin Symptoms Questionnaire to Brazilian Portuguese.

INTRODUCTION

Occupational skin diseases are a frequently self-reported condition in industrialized countries. However, there are few developed and standardized self-report instruments to screen the population at risk for occupational dermatological diseases.

OBJECTIVES

Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the long and short versions of The Nordic Occupational Skin Symptoms Questionnaire into Brazilian Portuguese.

METHODS

The process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the questionnaire was developed following the good practice recommendations of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research.

RESULTS

After translation into Brazilian Portuguese, the first reconciled version of the questionnaire was evaluated in a first round of interviews with 28 individuals, including patients with dermatological disease and healthy people. In the first meeting of the study review group, changes were made to 43 questions (75.4%) (e.g., inclusion of definition of terms, reformulation of instructions, and changes to alternative words or synonyms). In the second meeting of the study review group, there were modifications in three questions, creation of the second consensus version in Brazilian Portuguese, and then the back-translation of this version. After the second round of cognitive interviews, which took place with 10 patients, we had the third review group meeting (no modification was made) and definition of the final version of the questionnaire.

CONCLUSIONS

The short and long versions of the Nordic Occupational Skin Symptoms Questionnaire questionnaire are available in Brazilian Portuguese.