Testing the equivalence of translations of widely used response choice labels: results from the IQOLA Project. International Quality of Life Assessment
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Authors
Keller, Susan D.Ware, John E. Jr.
Gandek, Barbara
Aaronson, Neil K.
Alonso, Jordi
Apolone, Giovanni
Bjorner, Jakob B.
Brazier, John E.
Bullinger, Monika
Fukuhara, Shunichi
Kaasa, Stein
Leplege, Alain
Sanson-Fisher, Robert W.
Sullivan, Marianne
Wood-Dauphinee, Sharon
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
1998-11-17Keywords
Analysis of VarianceEurope
*Health Status Indicators
Humans
Psychometrics
*Quality of Life
Questionnaires
Translating
*Translations
United States
Biostatistics
Epidemiology
Health Services Research
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Show full item recordAbstract
The similarity in meaning assigned to response choice labels from the SF-36 Health Survey (SF-36) was evaluated across countries. Convenience samples of judges (range, 10 to 117; median = 48) from 13 countries rated translations of response choice labels, using a variation of the Thurstone method of equal appearing intervals. Judges marked a point on a 10-cm line-representing the magnitude of a response choice label (e.g., "good" relative to the anchors of "poor" and "excellent"). Ratings were evaluated to determine the ordinal consistency of response choice labels within a response scale; the degree to which differences between adjacent response choice labels were equal interval; and the amount of variance due to response choice label, country, judge, and interaction between response choice label and country. Results confirmed the hypothesized ordering of response choice labels; the percentage of ordinal pairs ranged from 88.7% to 100% (median = 98.2%) across countries and response scales. Examination of the average magnitudes of response choice labels supported the "quasi-interval" nature of the scales. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results supported the generalizability of response choice magnitudes across countries; labels explained 64% to 77% of the variance in ratings, and country explained 1% to 3%. These results support the equivalence of SF-36 response choice labels across countries. Departures from the assumption of equal intervals, when observed, were similar across countries and were greatest for the two response scales that are recalibrated under standard SF-36 scoring. Results provide justification for scoring translations of individual items using standard SF-36 scoring; whether these items form the same scales in other countries as they do in the United States is evaluated with tests of scaling assumptions.Source
J Clin Epidemiol. 1998 Nov;51(11):933-44. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1016/S0895-4356(98)00084-5Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/47412PubMed ID
9817110Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/S0895-4356(98)00084-5