This working group was initiated at the 2015 ICRA meeting in Berkeley. Co-ordinators are Deborah Hall and Lena Wong. Other interested members are invited.
Many hearing-related questionnaires have been translated and adapted from their source language into other target languages for use in countries that sometimes have very different experiences of daily life. Although good translation and cross-cultural adaption products do not assure the success of a study, if poorly done, such products can mean that an otherwise sound study fails simply because the poor quality of translation and cross-cultural adaption prevents researchers from collecting comparable data.
In November 2017, the working group produced a set of guidelines which synthesise components of good practice that are already established, see guidelines. These can be used as a best practice standard for the development and reporting of questionnaire translation and cross-cultural adaption for use in other countries. The guidelines are published as an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. As well as a step-by-step practical guide, the article includes useful materials as Supplemental files such as illustrative examples for each step, a sample template for documenting the translation and adaptation process (known as a reconciliation report), and a checklist of preferred reporting items for hearing-related questionnaires that have been translated and adapted for different languages and cultures.
Longer term goals are to evaluate how well the work already conducted on the IOI-HA, and other hearing-related questionnaires, fits these best practice standards.
Guidelines: Hall DA, Domingo SZ, Hamdache LZ, Manchaiah V, Thammaiah S, Evans C, Wong LLN (2017). A good practice guide for translating and adapting hearing-related questionnaires for different languages and cultures. International Journal of Audiology. doi:10.1080/14992027.2017.1393565