Brazilian Portuguese version of the Subjective Time Questionnaire (STQ-BP): cultural adaptation and preliminary psychometric properties

Abstract

Introduction: Time awareness has been associated with many relevant outcomes in Mental Health. The Subjective Time Questionnaire (STQ) is a self-report scale with 26 items that assess the subjective judgment of different time lengths. Objective: This study aimed to translate, adapt and validate the STQ to Brazilian Portuguese. Methods: The translation and adaptation processes followed the guidelines of the International Test Commission (ITC). Ten experts compared the first translated version with the original scale. After a review, 446 participants (66.1% women) answered the STQ. Reliability and factor structure were investigated. Results: The average equivalence between the experts’ evaluation was 69.3%. Twenty-one items showed correlations with the total score ranging from 0.250 to 0.641. A Principal Component Analysis found 6 dimensions (eigenvalues > 1). In contrast, the Exploratory Factor Analysis showed a three-factor solution with 10 items. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported this structure (RMSEA = 0.049; CFI = 0.991; TLI = 0.987). The Cronbach's Alpha for the final version was 0.696 and ranged from 0.643 to 0.825 for the factors. Conclusion: The three-factor solution suggested an adequate model. The reliability was marginally acceptable and in accordance with sparse previous findings. Overall, the results provided initial evidences of the validity and reliability for the STQ Brazilian Portuguese version.