Spanish translation and validation of the Nursing Dental Coping Beliefs Scale

Abstract

Background: Caregivers of disable and dependent people, institutionalized elderly and hospitalized, must provided oral health care for the patients under their care, for that reason, it is necessary to have a valid instrument in Spanish to measure oral health beliefs among caregivers. The aim of the study was to translate to Spanish the Nursing Dental Coping Beliefs Scale (Nursing DCBS) and validate this questionnaire to be used on Hispanic caregivers. Methods: The nursing DCBS was translated to Spanish and revised for linguistic adaptation. A group of experts revised their content and face validity. A pilot study of the questionnaire in Spanish, was held in a group of 118 nurse assistant students from two professional institutes. The reliability of the instrument, was evaluated by its internal consistency with Cronbach´s Alpha and the measurement stability, through intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results: The questionnaire was validated by its appearance and content. The internal consistency for the questionnaire through Cronbach`s Alpha was 0.64 and the stability of the instrument 0.5 for ICC. Conclusions: The Spanish version of the nursing Dental Coping Beliefs Scale is a questionnaire that has an internal consistency to be used as an instrument to measure oral health beliefs among caregivers, however, future investigations must re-evaluate there psychometric characteristics, specially its stability as an instrument.