Ware JE, Gandek B; International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Meeting.

Annu Meet Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Meet. 1997; 13: 144.

The Health Institute, New England Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.

Multinational health-related quality of life (HQL) studies depend upon translations that are both culturally appropriate and meaningful within each country and conceptually equivalent across countries. To assure that these objectives are met and that minimum standards of reliability and validity are achieved in each country, boht qualitative and quantitative methods are used. The process of readying HQL measures for multinational studies is discussed, using experience with the SF-36 Health Survey from 14 of the 40 International Quality of LIfe Assessment (IQOLA) Project countries. IQOLA methods include an iterative translation process; psychometric evaluation of scales and summary measures; validity studies using clinical and other external "criteria"; and norm-based interpretation. Translation follows a standard forward-backward process, including qualitative and quantitative evaluations of the quality and conceptual equivalence of the translations. Empirical evaluation includes formal psychometric tests (e.g., Thurstone and Rasch scaling) and confirmatory tests of hypothesized item groupings corresponding to scales (multitrait scaling); reliability studies; and validity studies using a variety of methods. Validity studies, which evlauate the extent to which each scale and summary measure has the same relationship with clinical "criteria" and other external variables, establish the equivalence of interpretations across countries. Norm-based comparisons test whether age and disease groups differ from health populations to the same extent across countries. The IQOLA experience to date supports the reliability and validity of SF-36 translations in many countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK, and suggests that carefully adapted and translated HQL questionnaires can be used in multinational trials. Noteworthy differences between countries in scores for some SF-36 scales warrant further study. Implications for the analysis of data from multinaitonal studies are discussed.

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Australia
• Belgium
• Canada
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Health Surveys
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Psychometrics
• Questionnaires
• Spain
• Sweden
• Technology Assessment, Biomedical
• Translating
• Translations
• methods
• utilization
• hsrmtgs

Other ID:

• HTX/98601775

UI: 102233320

From Meeting Abstracts