Tradução e adaptação cultural do questionário alimentar noturno

Abstract

Night eating syndrome (NES) is an eating disorder characterized by a delay in the circadian time of food intake, with more than 25% of daily caloric intake after the evening meal or at least 3 nocturnal awakenings with ingestion per week. The Night Eating Questionnaire (NEQ) has 14 items with a 5 point scale and has been used as a tool for NES evaluation. The main objective of this study was to translate the current English version of the NEQ into Portuguese and adapting to cultural differences to allow for its use in Brazilian patients. The first part of the study consisted of translation; back-translation to English; review of the translations and evaluation of semantic equivalence. After this initial phase, intra and inter-observer reproducibility was assessed in a group of 37 individuals. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated by the Cronbach coefficient in 90 individuals. The translated and adapted version showed excellent internal consistency, with an alfa coefficient slightly below 0.9. This new version also had adequate reproducibility both intra-observer, with coefficients between 0.95 and 1.0, and inter-observer, with coefficients between 0.92 and 1.0. These results show that the translated questionnaire is clear, and the answers elicited are consistent and remain stable over time. Therefore, equivalence of the concepts in each item and operational equivalence of the English and Portuguese versions are established. Future studies evaluating the applicability of the Brazilian version using samples stratified by schooling, income and social status are necessary for a more precise evaluation of this tool.