Cross-cultural adaptation of the Fat Talk Questionnaire for Brazilian Portuguese language.

Abstract

To perform the cross-cultural adaptation of the Fat Talk Questionnaire into Brazilian Portuguese with focus on adolescent girls. The steps taken in this research were: conceptual and item equivalence, semantics, operational. The conceptual and item equivalence was performed by researchers in the field of Nutrition and body image; semantics involved translators fluent in English and Portuguese (n=3) and experts (n=19) in body image and eating behavior. Step 3 included 32 female adolescents (15 and 18 years), who answered the translated and adapted version to assess comprehension by the target audience. Of the 14 items, six were considered adequate by the experts and 3 items required minimal language adjustments. Five items needed broader changes for cultural and idiomatic adaptation. The back-translation was approved by the original authors. The average response time by the adolescents was 3.5 minutes, with no queries. The scale was translated and adapted to Brazilian Portuguese aimed at female adolescents, showing satisfactory results in the translation process, conceptual, semantic and operational equivalence. Analyses of external validity, measurement equivalence and reproducibility were also required.