Cross-cultural adaptation of the ABILHAND Questionaire, specific for individuals after stroke

Abstract

Introduction: The ABILHAND, specific for individuals after stroke, is a questionnaire for the assessment of manual ability and was developed based upon the Rasch measurement model, which allows for the conversion of ordinal scores into linear measures. Objective: To cross-culturally adapt the ABILHAND for its use in Brazil. Method: The process of cross-cultural adaptation followed standardized guidelines: translation, back-translation, summary of the translations, expert committee evaluation, and testing of the pre-final version, for which 10 individuals were recruited. Results: The comparison between the original and the translated versions showed good equivalence between the versions. The expert committee adapted the description of the items to the grammatical rules of the Portuguese language and added an expression in an item, to improve conceptual equivalence. During the pre-final version testing, no comprehension difficulties were observed during the application of the questionnaire. Conclusion: The ABILHAND-Brazil showed satisfactory semantic, linguistic, cultural, and conceptual equivalence. These results supported the use of the ABILHAND in Brazil, which can be a good option for the evaluation of the performance of post-stroke individuals in manual activities.