Cross-cultural adaptation of an intimate partner violence screening tool (WAST) for the Mozambican context; implications for more effective HIV prevention and treatment counseling

Abstract

This article aims to translate and carry out the cross-cultural adaptation of the WAST - Woman Abuse Screening Tool, designed in English and used to track violence by an intimate partner. For adaptation, the conceptual equivalence of terms and semantics between the original version in English and the version translated into Portuguese was evaluated, the result of two translations and back-translation, discussion by a panel of experts, establishment of the preliminary version and finally testing in 88 participants of both sexes, selected in two health units at the level of primary health care. The cross-cultural adaptation resulted in an equivalence of concepts and semantics between the initial translation and the final back-translation. From the testing it was concluded that the version of WAST translated and adapted to the Mozambican context, has good internal consistency, the scales of WAST-Short (α = 0.813) such as those of IPV or WAST-Long (α = 0.834) are highly related. The two scales do not discriminate between men and women (WAST-Short p = 0.204, WAST-Long p = 0.271). Implications are discussed for more effective HIV prevention and treatment counseling.