Swedish translation and content evaluation of the Empowerment Audiology Questionnaire (EmpAQ-15).

Abstract

Objective: Translating the newly developed Empowerment Audiology Questionnaire, EmpAQ-15 to Swedish, and performing content validation on the Swedish version.

Design: Best-practice principles using forward and back translations which were revised by a committee prior to field testing. Field testing was conducted by cognitive interviews with hearing-aid users talking through and rating the items in the translated questionnaire. Content validation was assessed by examining equivalence, accessibility, acceptability, comprehensiveness, and relevance of interview data. Questionnaire introduction and scoring instructions were evaluated by Swedish audiologists.

Study sample: Ten adult native speaking Swedish hearing aid users, recruited with purposive sampling. Maximum variation based on age, gender, hearing aid usage, and degree of hearing loss. Seven Swedish audiologists assessing instructions for result calculations.

Results: The conceptual equivalence between the Swedish translation and the English original questionnaire was judged to be high overall. The instructions and majority of items were experienced as accessible, acceptable, comprehensive, and relevant. The audiologists showed that they could follow scoring instructions and reason about the results.

Conclusions: This content validity study was the first step towards a Swedish version of a self- report measure of Empowerment for people with hearing loss.