Translation, cross-cultural adaptation to the Portuguese language and validation of the Undergraduate Clinical Education Environment Measure Instrument (Uceem)

Abstract

Abstract: Introduction: The educational environment for the clinical teaching of undergraduate medical and nursing students influences the students’ perception of significant aspects of satisfaction in the clinical learning environment. Objective: To transculturally adapt, with the concept, content and construct validity, the instrument “Undergraduate Clinical Education Environment Measure - UCEEM” into the Brazilian Portuguese language and validate the translated and adapted version; involving medical and nursing students, while experiencing clinical teaching during their undergraduate course. Method: This is a methodology study aimed at the translation, adaptation and transcultural validation process, which is divided into six steps, as proposed by Beaton. The steps consisted in the translation, translation synthesis, back-translation, proofreading by the experts committee, pre-testing and submission of the final version of the instrument to the author. Five bilingual translators participated in this process (three for the translation and two for the back-translation), as well as eight expert professionals who work as academic faculty and have Master’s and Doctoral degrees. The validation was carried out at two moments: the first one by using semantic, idiomatic, cultural and conceptual equivalence (pre-test), involving 30 medical and nursing students going through clinical teaching; and the second moment, the validation and assessment of the psychometric properties with 161 students from these same courses. Result: The transcultural adaptation carried out by eight expert professionals in this area was performed based on the experts’ considerations, in addition to the analysis and considerations of the researcher and author of the original instrument. The result of this phase led to the final version of this instrument in Brazilian Portuguese, which shows 26 items divided into two dimensions and four subscales that were maintained according to its original form. Following the filling out of the instrument by the nursing and medical students, the analysis of the Theory of Response revealed to be reliable, as determined by a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.917. According to Spearman’s correlation test, the results indicate a positive correlation between the questions. Conclusions: The Portuguese version of the UCEEM instrument showed to be adequate and useful to evaluate the satisfaction with the educational environment in clinical teaching according to the perception of medical and nursing students.