Multidisciplinaridade e inovação metodológica na dinâmica de atuação do comitê de juízes na adaptação de instrumentos: Diabetes Empowerment Scale-Short Form (DES-SF)

Abstract

To assess the effects of educational approach in users with diabetes, the use of appropriate tools is key. Among the instruments available in the literature is the "Diabetes Empowerment Scale-Short Form (SF-DES)." The DES-SF, as most of the instruments, was designed and developed in English and therefore had to submit it to the international rules of translation and cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese. The fourth phase of the adaptation process, the committee of judges, is described in this study. In it, experts are invited to review all the elaborate versions and record the discussions and decisions taken, in order to ensure the semantic, idiomatic, cultural and conceptual instrument, besides the specific care with the fill and appearance instructions. This study aimed to describe a multidisciplinary and innovative approach to the dynamics of expert committee's role in the adaptation of instruments implemented in the translation of the Diabetes Empowerment Scale-Short Form. Multidisciplinary meetings were held to adapt the DES-SF, originally in English to Brazilian Portuguese. The next step was to use the online tool e-surv (esurv.org) for implementation of consulting the expert committee. The responses were automatically sent to the e-surv database that was later used in the data analysis. The researchers discussed all questions and suggestions raised by the judges until they reached a consensus on the word translation (s) or term (s). The discussions were guided in choosing the most appropriate option, namely that retain the meaning expressed in the original instrument without compromising the understanding by population, on which the instrument will be dedicated. In addition the qualitative analysis, the scale went through quantitative analysis, which was performed in the statistical programming environment R. The online tool e-surv, allowed the participation of different specialists (19 professionals Linguistics and 19 of the Health area) maximizing contributions to cultural adaptation of the instrument, and also expanding the concept of expert committee, which was set in a multidisciplinary way and through online technology. The different members of the committee of the areas of letters and health profiles were responsible for different assessments of the translation submitted for assessment, enhancing the identification of problems of adaptation between the original and translated versions. The use of an online tool was effective in collecting the information. The methodological steps followed ensured the validation face and instrument content. The multidisciplinary collaboration within the scope of an integrated design enables further evaluation of content issues and expression in translation tools, which, combined with an online data collection methodology, is an improvement of conventional procedures.