Adaptation and Validation of “Nursing Work Index - Revised” for the Brazilian Culture

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Renata Cristina Gasparino, RN
Department of Nursing, Campinas State University, Jundiaí, Brazil
Edinêis de Brito Guirardello, RN, PhD
Nursing Department, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil

Learning Objective 1: understand the internationally recommended stages in the methodological procedure of cultural adaptation.

Learning Objective 2: understand the importance of evaluating psychometric proprieties of an instrument after its cultural adaptation.

Purpose: the present study aimed to translate, adapt and evaluate the psychometric proprieties of the “Nursing Work Index - Revised”, for the Brazilian culture.
Methods: the internationally recommended stages were followed in the methodological procedure: translation; back-translation; assessment by a group of judges and pre-test. The reliability was evaluate through internal consistency and the validity through divergent construct validity through the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), and criterion validity through the use of the variables: satisfaction at work, perception of quality of care, and intention to leave work in the following year.
Results: the translation and back-translation stages were satisfactorily carried out and the assessment of the synthesis version by the committee of judges resulted in changes in most of the items, assuring the equivalence between the original and translated versions. During the pre-test, the need of reformulating some items was shown, making them clearer and easily comprehensible. Reliability of the total of items and the adapted instrument subscales resulted in satisfactory internal consistency. The Brazilian version of the NWI – R subscales’ validity, evaluated through the divergent construct and concurrent criterion, was satisfactory as significant correlations were obtained between the adapted instrument subscales and those of the MBI, and between the subscales of the NWI - R – Brazilian Version and the variables perception of quality of care, satisfaction at work and intention to leave work in the following year.
Conclusion: the process of translation and cultural adaptation of the NWI – R for the Brazilian culture was concluded with success and the subscales of the “Nursing Work Index - Revised”Brazilian Version can be safely used in similar populations because they reached satisfactory results in terms of reliability and validity.