Adaptação transcultural do The Caregiver Oncology Quality of Life Questionnaire (CarGOQoL) para a língua portuguesa do Brasil

Abstract

In the last decades, was observed a growing interest in evaluating the quality of life. However, the instruments that measure quality of life in oncology are generally directed to patients. There are few specific instruments to assess quality of life of caregivers of cancer patients and culturally constructed for the Brazilian population. In 2011, in France, researchers developed an instrument called The Oncology Caregiver Quality of Life Questionnaire - CarGOQoL to assess the quality of life of caregivers of patients with cancer. The aim of this study was perform cross-cultural adaptation of the The Caregiver Oncology quatily of Life Questionnaire - CarGOQoL for Portuguese in the Brazilian context, characterize the profile of caregiver and patients, to verify the validity of content and appearance and to study the association between sociodemographic and clinical variables with indexes of quality of life from Brazilian caregivers.This is a methodological study with a quantitative approach, performed at a referral center for oncology in Fortaleza (CE). The study was initiated after the consent from author of the scale. The adaptation process followed the guidelines proposed by Beaton et al (2007), and included the following steps: translations of the original instrument for the Portuguese language; synthesis of translated versions; back translation to the original language (French); review by an expert committee for evaluation of semantic, idiomatic, experiential and conceptual equivalence, as well as the construction of the pre final version; and application of pre-test, adapted version, in Brazilian caregivers. To analyze the agreement between judges was calculated The Concordance Index and the items had values under 80%, according to recommendations in the literature, were critically examined and reformulated. The sample was composed by 40 caregivers of patients with cancer. During the application of the pre-test was able to detect words or expressions that have caused doubts; they have been modified according to suggestions from caregivers. Data collection occurred from June 2013 to January 2014. Besides the adapted version was used a form with demographic information from caregivers and sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of the patients. The collected data were organized into files of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), version 21.0, and subjected to statistical analyzes. The profile of caregivers was, the majority were women (95%)in the age range between 30 and 50 years (62,5%), married (65,0%), with family income between 1 and 2 minimum salaries (57,5%), daughters of care patients (52,5%) residing in the same household as the patient (57,5%), performing the task of caring without pay (100%). The correlation between sociodemographic variables and domains showed statistical significance of the quality of life of the caregiver related to the degree of relationship (p = 0,009) and patient gender (p = 0,006). It can be concluded that the process of cultural adaptation of CarGOQoL resulted in an adapted and reliable instrument for the Brazilian context.