Spanish adaptation of the scale of locus of health control modified for AIDS

The objective of this study is to adapt the Modified Health Locus of Contro l Scale (HLOC) (Kelly, et al., 1990) to Spanish and to evaluate teenager's perceived control about the infection of HIV in order to be able to prevent it. It is a study aimed at attaining a final edited test that is understoo d by the intended sample of adolescents with and without psychological diso rders. The adaptation process is divided into ten phases: 1) the translatio n of the instrument from English to Spanish; 2) a revision of the translati on by two expert translators; 3) inclusion of the pertinent changes as sugg ested by the expert translators who evaluated the translation; 4) a revisio n of the edited items by 9 Spanish expert judges in areas related to HIV/AI DS, health psychology, preventive psychology, etc.; 5) an analysis of the r esults; 6) inclusion of the changes indicated by the expert judges for the edited items that hold an agreement percentage inferior to 85%; 7) the eval uation of item comprehension in two groups of adolescents one with and one without psychological disorders; 8) an analysis of the results for each one of the sample groups and for the total sample of adolescents: 9) inclusion of some of the changes in language terms for those items that did not reac h an agreement percentage of 85% in stated comprehension and; 10) the elabo ration of the final instrument. Key words: HIV/AIDS, adolescents, locus of control, prevention, adaptation, Spanish.