Cross-cultural adaptation of the Modified Gait Efficacy Scale for individuals with stroke

Abstract

The Modified Gait Efficacy Scale (mGES) assesses the walking confidence under challenging circumstances. For its application with the Brazilian population, its cross-cultural adaptation is required. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt the mGES to the Brazilian-Portuguese language. The process of cross-cultural adaptation followed standardized procedures and was conducted in five stages: translation, back-translation, synthesis of the translations, expert committee consultation, and testing of the pre-final version. The pre-final version was administered to 12 individuals with stroke, who were asked to interpret all of the items. The cross-cultural adaptation process followed all of the recommended guidelines and minor modifications in three items were carried-out, to facilitate understanding. Satisfactory results were obtained during the testing of the pre-final version, since there was not found any problem regarding wording and clarity of the items or the objective of the scale. The mGES-Brazil showed satisfactory semantic, linguistic, cultural, and conceptual equivalences to the original version, and may be used within clinical and research contexts in Brazil, for the assessment of walking confidence of individuals with stroke