Cross-cultural adaptation of the caregiver contribution to heart failure self-Care into Brazilian Portuguese and content validation

BACKGROUND: The Caregiver Contribution to Heart Failure Self-Care (CACHS) is a Canadian instrument that assesses caregivers' (CGs) contributions to heart failure (HF) patients' self-care, but a Brazilian version was lacking. AIMS: To adapt CACHS into Brazilian Portuguese and to estimate the content validity of the adapted version. METHODS: A psychometric study of cross-cultural adaptation and content validation was conducted. Linguistic equivalence was assessed by eight professional experts. Content validity was assessed by an expert professional panel (n=8; for clarity, theoretical relevance and practical relevance) and a CG panel (n=46; for cognitive debriefing of the adapted instrument). In the cultural adaptation, the items were considered equivalent if experts reached an agreement ≥80%. In the content validation, the items were considered acceptable if content validity coefficients (CVC) were ≥0.70. RESULTS: The translated version was considered consistent with the original CACHS by the authors. In the second round of linguistic equivalence assessment, all items achieved 100% agreement, except for one item, which presented 75% agreement in conceptual equivalence. The CVC in the first and second rounds of content validity assessment by experts was 0.80 to 0.90. During cognitive testing, the CGs requested explanations on three items, which were reformulated. All CGs then understood the Brazilian version of CACHS, named CACHS - Versão Brasileira (CACHS-Br). CONCLUSIONS: CACHS-Br is equivalent to the original version and provided satisfactory evidence of content validity. Further psychometric testing of this version should allow for the measurement of the CG contributions to HF self-care in Brazil.