Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Haase Resilience in Illness Scale: Psychometric Properties Testing

Chen, Chin-Mi

Background: The quality of studies using translated scales is determined by the equivalence between the original and translated versions. It is important to validate the cultural appropriateness prior to using the translated version of the Haase Resilience in Illness Scale (HRIS) in Taiwan.

Purpose: Describe the translational process and evaluating the equivalence between the English and Mandarin version of the HRIS. In addition, cross-cultural comparison of reliability and validity for the HRIS were done between American adolescents with cancer and Taiwanese adolescents.

Methods: A forward-backward translation and the conceptual and semantic equivalences were examined between the original and translated version of HRIS, a 13 item Likert-type scale. Thirty bilingual university students tested the two instrument versions. Internal consistency reliability of the translated versions was evaluated. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity of the translated version. The factor loadings and mean scores were compared across groups: adolescents with cancer (Group 1, N=111 American; Group 2, N=160 Taiwanese) and healthy Taiwanese adolescents (Group 3, N=120).

Results: No significant difference was found between the original and translated versions. The two versions demonstrated moderately high correlations (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.87, p< .01). All groups had similar item-to-factor loadings, except on 2 items related to perspectives of measuring up to one’s own and to other’s expectations. A single factor structure explained 71.71% of variance in Group 1), 42.75% in Group 2, and 34.47% in Group 3. Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged from 0.81-0.86 across three groups.

Conclusion: The HRIS is appropriate for comparative cross-cultural studies. Two items with strikingly different loadings, “It is important to live up to my own expectations of myself” and “I know others look up to me“ seem to reflect cultural differences in emphasis on self verses others, should be further investigated.