Measurement and assessment are a fundamental activity of science. To perform an adequate measurement action, the  instruments should present good validity and reliability evidence. Using a measure that does not assess what it intends to can lead to wrong decisions. Taking adequate measures is a fundamental condition for scientific research. Cross-cultural validation refers to whether measures that were originally generated in a single culture are applicable, meaningful, and thus, equivalent in another culture, country or context. It has been mainly applied in psychological studies, especially those which need to adapt self-reported health status measures for use in languages other than the original context. Thus, our work has focused on generating valid instruments to assess different diseases in other cultures and languages, as in Tanzania. We have translated and adapted the instruments by using standard protocols to measure the reliability and the validity evidence of the scales. As part of the validity measure, this project aims to test: I) the evidence based on test content; II) the evidence based on response processes; III) the evidence based on internal structure of the test; and IV) the evidence based on the relation with other variables. The investigations performed in this project mainly involved evaluating injury patients presenting for care at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania. As one important outcome of this project, the psychometric studies will come up with new possible instruments to contribute to the assessment of several constructs and variables into community science.

Main Topics

Cross cultural studies, Adaptation, Scales