Linguistic translation into French of two Questionnaires on the problematic digital use assessed by adolescents and their parents (Preprint)

Abstract

The emergence of problematic digital use (PDU) is increasingly alarming, affecting between 7% and 20% of the world's adolescent population. However, there is no validated questionnaire in French to measure this. Only a few questionnaires self-reported by adolescents or hetero-reported by parents have been translated and validated in English.

The aim of this study is to translate into French the Digital Addiction Scale for Children (DASC) self-reported by adolescents and the Problematic Media Use Measure (PMUM) hetero-reported by parents of adolescents.

We used the "forward/backward" method to establish the translation to achieve cross-cultural adaptation. There are three stages: (1) Initial translation and synthesis/reconciliation of the translations phase, (2) Back-translation and expert committee phase and (3) Pretesting phase with eight parents completed the PMUM questionnaire and eight adolescents completed the DASC questionnaire.

During the translation phase, despite slight variations in translation for both questionnaires, the translators quickly reached a consensus. The expert committee did not propose any other conceptual changes. In the final phase, the parents made no comments to improve the questions or the wording. Although some adolescents mentioned repetition between certain questions, they did not suggest any improvements to the DASC questionnaire in French.

A questionnaire enabling adolescents to assess their own use of the drug (DASC) and another on parents' perceptions of their children's use (PMUM) will enable us to better detect or assess the prevalence of the PDU in French adolescent population.