Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Health Assessment Tools

The development of new information and communication technology has led to better, properly validated measurement tools.However, such tools are sometimes created in languages other than our own and in countries that are culturally distinct from those of populations we wish to study.This situation creates a need to adapt assessment tools before we can use them in new contexts.An adapted instrument, rather than an entirely new one, is needed because the indiscriminate creation of questionnaires is unjustified.The development of a new tool takes longer, is more costly, and uses more nonmonetary resources as well; moreover, the result would not be useful for generating knowledge.1 Consider, for example, the case of a 2010 Cochrane Collaboration systematic review of vitiligo treatments that concluded that trial results could not be compared because the researchers had assessed repigmentation using 48 different scales. 2 An appropriate process must be followed to ensure that a translated measurement tool uses language in the way it is understood in a cultural context that is different from the original setting yet does not lose its measurement properties.