title: The Spanish translation and cultural adaptation of five mental health outcome measures.
abstract: In this paper we report on the process of translating five mental health outcome measures into Spanish and adapting them to Latino culture. The instruments considered are the World Health Organization-Disability Assessment Scale, the Burden Assessment Scale, the Family Burden Scale, Lehman's Quality of Life Interview and the Continuity of Care in Mental Health Services Interview. A systematic process of translation and adaptation of the instruments was followed with the goal of achieving cultural equivalence between the English and Spanish versions of the instruments in five dimensions: semantic, content, technical, construct, and criterion equivalence. In this paper we present data about the semantic, content, and technical equivalence. Various steps were taken to achieve equivalence in these dimensions, including the use of a bilingual committee, a multi-national bilingual committee, back-translation, and focus groups with mental health patients and their relatives.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D017281:Cost of Illness; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000628:therapy; D008875:Middle Aged; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014175:Translating; D014481:United States