title: Adaptation and validation of stroke-aphasia quality of life (SAQOL-39) scale to Malayalam.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Aphasia, an acquired inability to understand and/or speak language, is a common repercussion of stroke that denigrates the quality of life (QOL) in the affected persons. Several languages in India experience the dearth of instruments to measure the QOL of persons with aphasia. Malayalam, the language spoken by more than 33 million people in Kerala, the southern state of India, is not an exception to this.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This study aimed to adapt and validate the widely-used stroke-aphasia quality of life (SAQOL-39) scale to Malayalam.
  
  
  METHODS
  We required seven Malayalam-speaking Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs), hailing from different regions of Kerala, to examine the socio-cultural suitability of the original items in SAQOL-39 and indicate modifications, wherever necessary. Subsequently, the linguistic adaptation was performed through a forward-backward translation scheme. The socio-culturally and linguistically adapted Malayalam version was then administered on a group of 48 Malayalam-speaking persons with aphasia to examine the test-retest reliability, acceptability, as well as the internal consistency of the instrument.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The Malayalam SAQOL-39 scale showed high test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient, ICC = 0.91) as well as acceptability with minimal missing data (0.52%). Further, it yielded high internal consistency (Chronbach's ∝ = 0.98) as well as item-to-total and inter-domain correlations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Malayalam version of SAQOL-39 is the first socio-culturally and linguistically adapted tool to measure the QOL of persons with stroke-aphasia speaking this language. It may serve as a potential tool to measure the QOL of this population in both clinical practice and future research endeavors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing, School of Allied Health Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Ria
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Raju
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing, School of Allied Health Sciences, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Gopee
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Krishnan
keywords: Aphasia; India; Malayalam; quality of life; stroke