Tradução, adaptação e validação do Weight Efficacy Lifestyle Questionnaire (WEL) para população mexicana

Abstract

Obesity in adolescence is a health problem that affects the world's population and is considered one of the main factors in developing diseases. Thus, self-efficacy may be an important construct to determine health-promoting behaviors. The objective of the present study was: To translate and cross-culturally adapt the Weight Efficacy Lifestyle Questionnaire (WEL) to Spanish in the Mexican context and to verify the validity and reliability of the WEL, the Mexican version for assessing self-efficacy in eating behavior for weight control. This is a methodological study, which consisted of the development of two phases. The first phase was conducted in six stages (1. Initial Translation; 2. Synthesis of translations; 3. Back-translation; 4. Review by a committee of experts; 5. Pre-test and 6. Submission to authors) for the process of translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the WEL questionnaire, consisting of 20 items, grouped into 5 factors (1. Negative emotions, 2. Availability, 3. Social Pressure, 4. Physical discomfort and 5. Positive activities). The second phase included the evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Spanish version for Mexican adolescents, through the validity of the content where seven judges participated and the Content Validity Coefficients (CVC) were obtained, the construct validity was also performed through factor analysis, the criterion validity through gold standard correlation tests, and the reliability of homogeneity were calculated by obtaining Cronbach's alpha and the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC). The research was submitted to the ethics committee of the Faculty of Nursing of the Veracruzana University and adhered to the guidelines provided for in the General Health Law on scientific research with human beings in Mexico. The total CVC of the scale (0.96), the dimensions of language clarity (0.94), practical relevance (0.97) and theoretical relevance (0.96) obtained satisfactory scores. A total of 329 high school students from a public school participated in the study from February to March 2022, in which they had the opportunity to answer the WEL Spanish version and a sociodemographic and clinical questionnaire. In construct validity, the results of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkim (0.805) and Bartlett sphericity (1053.1; p<0.001) tests corroborated the factorability of the WEL. Thus, exploratory factor analysis confirmed 3 factors: Physical and emotional discomfort (11 items), 2. Availability (5 items) and 3. Positive activities (4 items). The new version of the WEL for Mexican adolescents correlated with the Eating Behavior Self-Efficacy Scale (rs=0.451), used as the gold standard in criterion validity. Cronbach's alpha ranged from α=0.930 with an ICC between 0.893 and 0.958 in the sample of 39 adolescents to α=0.786 with an ICC between 0.751 and 0.818 in the sample of 329 adolescents. The final version of the WEL in Spanish maintained the 20 items, distributed in 3 factors, with a Likert scale with 10 response options. From the results, it can be concluded that the WEL Spanish version is valid, reliable, and capable of assessing self-efficacy in eating behavior in Mexican adolescents and may be useful in the prevention and control of obesity.