Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #114413

Carlos S. Zometa, PhD, MSPH, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, M3055, SPH2, 109 S Observatory, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, 734-647-4799, czometa@umich.edu and Robert Dedrick, PhD, Measurement and Educational Research, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave, EDU 162, Tampa, FL 33620.

UNAIDS (2004) reported more than 1.7 million persons living with HIV in Latin America and estimated 240,000 new infections in 2004. The figures underscore the urgency to prevent transmission of HIV among Latin-American adolescents and young adults either through school or community-based educational programs. These programs will have to be evaluated with instruments that yield reliable and valid scores. An alternative to developing a new instrument is to adapt an existing one and to validate the scores in the new population. This study translated, cross-culturally adapted and validated an instrument's scores for use in public high schools in San Salvador, El Salvador. The original instrument consisted of items developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assess HIV/AIDS knowledge and five dimensions of attitudes in grades 7 to 12 in the United States. A total of 483 students from 30 randomly selected public high schools in El Salvador participated in a series of reliability and validation studies. The major conclusions were: (1) The methodology used was successful in cross-culturally adapting the instrument. (2) The reliability of the scores from the knowledge section was moderate. (3) Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for a 4-factor attitudinal model. The results provided support for the methodology to cross-culturally adapt an instrument to evaluate HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes. Psychometric properties of the knowledge section and the attitudinal component related to abstinence were acceptable but additional research is needed before the Spanish instrument can be used with confidence in El Salvador.

Learning Objectives: At the end of the session the participants will

• Describe the methodology to cross-culturally adapt an instrument from one country to another.
• Learn how to apply validation techniques to assess the equivalence of an adapted instrument.
• Describe the methodological and measurement challenges associated with the adaptation of an instrument for use in another cultural group.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation