Adaptação da Bateria de Testes EARS ao Português Europeu

Abstract

<strong>Introduction:</strong> The use of adequate assessment tools in health care is crucial for the management of care. The lack of specific tools in Portugal for assessing the performance of children who use cochlear implants motivated the translation and adaptation of the EARS (Evaluation of Auditory Responses to Speech) test battery into European Portuguese. This test battery is today one of the most commonly used by (re)habilitation teams of deaf children who use cochlear implants worldwide. The goal to be achieved with the validation of EARS was to provide (re) habilitation teams an instrument that enables: (i) monitoring the progress of individual (re)habilitation, (ii) managing a (re)habilitation program according to objective results, comparable between different (re)habilitation teams, (iii) obtaining data that can be compared with the results of international teams, and (iv) improving engagement and motivation of the family and other professionals from local teams.<br /><strong>Material and Methods:</strong> For the test battery translation and adaptation process, the adopted procedures were the following: (i) translation of the English version into European Portuguese by a professional translator, (ii) revision of the translation performed by an expert panel, including doctors, speech-language pathologists and audiologists, (iii) adaptation of the test stimuli by the team’s speechlanguage pathologist, and (iv) further review by the expert panel.<br /><strong>Results: </strong>For each of the tests that belong to the EARS battery, the introduced adaptations and adjustments are presented, combining the characteristics and objectives of the original tests with the linguistic and cultural specificities of the Portuguese population.<br /><strong>Discussion:</strong> The difficulties that have been encountered during the translation and adaptation process and the adopted solutions are discussed. Comparisons are made with other versions of the EARS battery.<br /><strong>Conclusion:</strong> We defend that the translation and the adaptation process followed for the EARS test battery into European Portuguese was correctly conducted, respecting the characteristics of the original instruments and adapting the test stimuli to the linguistic and cultural reality of the Portuguese population, thus meeting the goals that have been set.