Impact of the Terms "Regular" or "Pasable" as Spanish Translation for "Fair" of the Self-Rated Health Question Among US Latinos: A Randomized Experiment.

Abstract

Objectives. To examine measurement comparability of a Spanish version of self-rated health (SRH) with pasable as an alternative to regular for the response category "fair" in the English version.Methods. We translated "fair" into 2 Spanish versions: regular and pasable. We implemented a split-half experiment in 3 surveys independently conducted from October 2015 to January 2016, from April to November 2016, and from August to November 2017. Within each survey, we randomly assigned Spanish-interviewed Latino respondents to 1 of the 2 SRH versions. The total sample included 3261 Latino and 738 non-Latino White adults in the United States.Results. Spanish-interviewed Latinos reported substantively more favorable health on SRH with pasable than with regular. When pasable instead of regular was used for SRH, we observed a larger difference between respondents reporting positive versus negative SRH on objective health measures, including the frequency of doctor's visits. Furthermore, when we accounted for correlates of health, Latino-White disparities were attenuated with pasable.Conclusions. We recommend using pasable instead of regular for SRH Spanish translations to improve measurement equivalence in cross-lingual and cross-cultural research.