Preliminary translation and cultural adaptation of Health Utilities Index Questionnaires for application in Argentina

Quality-of-life assessment is being used increasingly in clinical research. This is true particularly in the case of survivors of cancer in childhood, where improving survival rates have raised concern regarding the long-term effects of medical cure. Health-status assessment and quality-of-life inst ruments have been developed for the most part in the English language, thus necessitating their translation and cultural adaptation for use in non-Eng lish-speaking countries. Our purpose was to develop a set of Spanish-langua ge questionnaires for application with a population of children with cancer in a tertiary-care center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Health Utilities Index (HUI), a conceptual framework for assessing health status, was chose n for this study. Three distinct questionnaires, based on the HUI, were use d: a self-completed one for health professionals and teachers (15Q) to repo rt assessments of children and 2 interviewer-administered ones, for child s urvivors (42Q) to report assessments about their own health status and pare nts (45Q) to report assessments about their children's health status. The o riginal translations and reviews were accomplished with direct oversight by members of the HUI Group, to ensure conceptual equivalence. The instrument s were then tested in Buenos Aires by application to staff of the hematolog y-oncology service, childhood cancer patients and the parents of childhood cancer patients. Several modifications were made based on these tests. We c oncluded that the translation and cultural adaptation of these instruments was adequate for use with the groups tested in a pilot survey of survivors of childhood cancer in Argentina. Int. J, Cancer Suppl, 12: 119-124, 1999. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.