Beginner's Intelligibility Test (BIT): translation, cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese and validation

Abstract

Objective: Translate and validate the Beginner's Intelligibility Test (BIT) speech intelligibility assessment instrument into Brazilian Portuguese.

Method: Study developed in two stages: 1st translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Beginner's Intelligibility Test instrument into Brazilian Portuguese; 2nd application of the instrument. The second stage of the study involved 20 children using cochlear implants, aged between 4 and 11 years old, enrolled in the Cochlear Implant Program at Hospital das Clínicas de Ribeirão Preto, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo. All data collection procedures were video, and audio recorded for analysis by judges. After orthographic transcription of each sentence repeated by the child, the judge was asked to score the participant's speech intelligibility and classify it according to criteria established in the literature.

Results: The translation stage took place for the four lists and 40 sentences of the Beginner's Intelligibility Test (BIT) instrument into Brazilian Portuguese, the semantic, idiomatic, experimental and conceptual equivalences were considered, and it took place without any difficulties identified by the translators. The terms used in the Portuguese language were similar and those that presented differences among the translators did not bring significant divergences to its understanding. In the inter-evaluator analysis, there was reliability between the classification and the score obtained. Different judges evaluated the same children and a concordance was observed in classification and scoring.

Conclusions: Face validity of the BIT was confirmed through the understanding of each sentence of the four lists by the majority of children using cochlear implants participating in the pre-test phase. The content validity among experts was unanimous for the four lists of sentences. The Brazilian Portuguese adapted version maintained the semantic, idiomatic, conceptual, and cultural equivalence, according to the evaluation of the expert committee.

Evidence level: 02.

Keywords: Child; Hearing impairment; Speech intelligibility; Tests.