School Reintegration and Leukemia: Translation and Adaptation of Deasy-Spinetta’s Behavioral Questionnaire

Abstract

The Deasy-Spinetta Behavior Questionnaire (DSBQ) offers an important contribution to the monitoring of school reintegration of children with cancer, especially those diagnosed with Acute Limphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), which account for the main survivors group in pediatric oncology. DSBQ investigates emotional, learning and socialization dimensions through 38 questions. The present study carried out the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the DSBQ to Brazilian Portuguese on the basis of six steps: approval request of DSBQ authors for the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the instrument; translation and reverse translation (or back translation); comparison of reverse translation with the original French version; assessment of a specialist committee regarding the need of items review and/or semantic adjustment; the submission of 20 teachers to Brazilian version in order to evaluate the intelligibility of items. Teachers considered the final version of the translated and adapted instrument as appropriate and intelligible, since a final consensus gross value of 81% was verified. The degree of agreement between raters was 0.6882 (±0.0247), which indicates a substantial agreement according to Fleiss’ Kappa measure. The development, translation and adaptation of foreign instruments tailored to the comprehension of impairments that impact educational context of children with ALL is crucial, given the lack of such assessment tools, the frequent report of learning disabilities among these children and the need to characterize the transient and late effects associated to illness and to the treatment of childhood cancer, which affect scholar development and quality of life of this clinical subgroup.