Tradução, adaptação transcultural, validação e confiabilidade do The Alzheimer’s Questionnaire

Abstract

The high growth of elderly populations and an increase in life expectancy is a worldwide phenomenon and, in Brazil, this number is also been growing due to advances in medicine. As a consequence, a greater number of people will be affected by different types of dementia, especially Alzheimer's disease. It is a neurodegenerative disease and, among the various symptoms, individuals predominantly present a decline in short-term memory. The Alzheimer’s Questionnaire instrument adds to the medical anamnesis the identification and early intervention of the disorder and contributes to a medical diagnosis with greater precision in the detection of Alzheimer’s disease. The aim of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the English version of The Alzheimer’s Questionnaire to Brasilian Portuguese. This study is characterized by the stages of translation, crosscultural adaptation, validation and reliability of an instrument. The elderly sample was characterized by a predominance of women, accounting for 73.81%, with a higher number of elderly individuals in the age range of 70 to 79 years and the majority had incomplete primary education (46.67%). In terms of gender distribution, the number of women with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was equal to those showing Alzheimer's disease symptoms, while a higher percentagem of male elderly individuals exhibites Alzheimer’s symptoms. Individuals with Alzheimer's symptoms had an average age of 78 years. Evidence of content validity demonstrated acceptable values for all items of the questionnaire and at every stage of instrument translation. Results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated a good fit for the model, with all factor loadings presenting sufficiently good values except for item Q13, which showed factor loadings with significance levels above 5%. Internal consistency indicators expressed appropriate results for all latent factors of the instrument. The results obtained in this study confirm that the English version of The Alzheimer’s Questionnaire was translated and culturally adapted into Brasilian Portuguese and is considered a tool with high internal consistency and gathers sufficient validity evidence to be used in the Brazilian context.