THE CROSS-CULTURAL ADAPTATION OF RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS, CONDUCTED BY NURSES IN BRAZIL: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

ABSTRACT

Objective:

to identify and analyze the theoretical approaches and stages of the cross-cultural adaptation of research instruments to the Portuguese language, by people working in the field of nursing in Brazil.

Method:

an integrative review of articles which described the process of cross-cultural adaptation of instruments used in clinical hospital practice, published between 2005 - 2016. The search was undertaken in MEDLINE^®, CINAHL^®, Scopus^®, Web of Science^®, LILACS^®, BDENF and SciELO^®. A total of 22 articles was analyzed, identifying the stages of the process of adaptation, the methodological approach, the instrument and the clinical specialty.

Results:

all the studies used the universalist approach, and 20 of these adopted Beaton as the methodological framework. Among the strong points, emphasis is placed on the adoption of methodological frameworks, implementation and detailing of the procedures adopted in the process, content validation and psychometric evaluation. However, the predominant weakness was the absence of information which is important in the adaptation process.

Conclusion:

an overvaluing of psychometric evaluation was evidenced, in detriment to the rigorous accomplishment of the adaptation process. The findings make it possible to elaborate recommendations for cross-cultural adaptation studies, which could support future research into this method.

DESCRIPTORS:
Translating; Validation studies; Nursing; Brazil